PS 3525 
.0846 
C6 

1912 
I Copy 1 




Class. 



Book_ 

Gopyright]si _ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE COLLECTORS 



THE COLLECTORS 



SHetng Caster tttostlp untetv tfje Jlintfc 
anh tKtntfy Commanbmentg 



Comprising a Ballade, wherein the Wrongfulness 
of Art Collecting is conceded, and as well Cer- 
tain Stories : IT Campbell Corot, which recounts 
the career of an able and candid Picture Forger 
IT The del Puente Giorgione, which tells of an art- 
ful Great Lady and an Artless Expert ^The 
Lombard Runes, a mere interlude, but revealing 
a certain duplicity in Professional Seekers for 
Truth IT Their Cross, so called from an inanimate 
Object of Price which wrought Woe to a well 
meaning New York Couple %Tke Missing St 
Michael, a tale of Italianate Americans which is 
full of Vanities and, though alluring to the 
Sophisticated, quite unfit for the Simple Reader 
IT The Lustred Pots, again a mere interlude, but of 
a grim sort, as it grazes the Sixth Commandment 
If and The Balaklava Coronal, which, notwith- 
standing its exotic title, is mostly of our own 
People, showing the Triumph of a resourceful 
Dealer over two Critics and a Captain of Indus- 
try IT To which seven stories are added some R^- 
fiections upon Art Collecting, setting forth Excuses 
and Palliations for a Practice usually regarded as 
Pernicious. ^C ^ ^ £L <£ & 

By FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Junr. 

PRINTED AT NEW YORK WITH THE TYPES OF 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY • MCMXII 



^ 



Copyright, 1912, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



Published October. 1912 



£«i;A328042 



V 

t 

FOREWORD 

i 

Of the seven stories of art collecting that 
make up this book "Campbell Corot" and 
the "Missing St. Michael" first appeared under 
the pseudonym of Francis Cotton, in "Scrib- 
ner's Magazine," and are now reprinted by- 
its courteous permission. Similar acknowledg- 
ment is due the "Nation" for allowing the 
sketch on art collecting to be republished, 
Many readers will note the similarity between 
the story "The del Puente Giorgione" and 
Paul Bourget's brilliant novelette, "La Dame 
qui a perdu son Peintre." My story was 
written in the winter of 1907, and it was not 
until the summer of 191 1 that M. Bourget's 
delightful tale came under my eye. Clearly 
the same incident has served us both as raw 
material, and the noteworthy differences be- 
tween the two versions should sufficiently 
advise the reader how little either is to be 
taken as a literal record of facts or estimate of 
personalities. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Ballade of Art Collectors - - - - ix 

Campbell Corot -------- i 

The del Puente Giorgione - - - - 27 

The Lombard Runes ------- 55 

Their Cross ---------- 73 

The Missing St. Michael ------ 93 

The Lustred Pots --------139 

The Balaklava Coronal ------153 

On Art Collecting -------- 177 



A BALLADE OF ART COLLECTORS 

Oh Lord! We are the covetous. 

Our neighbours 7 goods afflict us sore. 
From Frisco to the Bosphorus 

All sightly stuff 9 the less the more, 
We want it in our hoard and store. 

Nor sacrilege doth us appal — 
Egyptian vault — fane at Cawnpore — 

Collector folk are sinners all. 

Our envoys plot in partibus. 

They've small regard for chancel door, 
Or Buddhist bolts contiguous t 

To lustrous jade or gold galore 
Adorning idol squat or tall — 

These be strange gods that we adore — 
Collector folk are sinners all. 

Of T^omulus Augustulus 

The signet ring I proudly wore. 
Some rummaging in ossibus 

I most repentantly deplore. 
My taste has changed; I now explore 

The sepulchres of Senegal 
And seek the pots of Singapore — 

Collector folk are sinners all. 

"Lord! Crave my neighbour's wife! What for? 

I much prefer his crystal ball 
From far Cathay. Then, Lord, ignore 

Collector folk who' re sinners all. 




CAMPBELL COROT 

]|HE Academy reception was ap- 
proaching a perspiring and vo- 
ciferous close when the Anti- 
quary whispered an invitation 
to the Painter, the Patron, and the Critic. 
A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs 
heavily, even against the more solid pleas- 
ures of the mind, so terminating four con- 
ferences on as many tendencies in modern 
art, and abandoning four hungry souls, 
four hungry bodies bore down an avenue 
toward " Dick's" smoky realm, where they 
found a quiet corner apart from the crowd. 
It is a place where one may talk freely or 
even foolishly — one of those rare oases in 
which an artist, for example, may venture 
to read a lesson to an avowed patron of art. 
All the way down the Patron had bored us 
with his new Corot, which he described at 
tedious length. Now the Antiquary barely 
tolerated anything this side of the eight- 
eenth century, the Painter was of Courbet's 



2 CAMPBELL COROT 

sturdy following, the Critic had been writ- 
ing for a season that the only hope in art 
for the rich was to emancipate themselves 
from the exclusive idolatry of Barbizon. 
Accordingly the Patron's rhapsodies fell on 
impatient ears, and when he continued his 
importunities over the Scotch woodcock 
and ale, the Painter was impelled to ex- 
press the sense of the meeting. 
"Speaking of Corot," he began genially, 
"there are certain misapprehensions about 
him which I am fortunately able to clear 
up. People imagine, for instance, that he 
haunted the woods about Ville d'Avray. 
Not at all. He frequented the gin-mills in 
Cedar Street. We are told he wore a peas- 
ant's blouse and sabots; on the contrary, 
he sported a frock-coat and congress 
gaiters. His long clay pipe has passed into 
legend, whereas he actually smoked a tilted 
Pittsburg stogy. We speak of him by the 
operatic name of Camille; he was prosa- 
ically called Campbell. You think he 
worked out of doors at rosy dawn; he 
painted habitually in an air-tight attic by 
lamplight." 



CAMPBELL COROT 3 

As the Painter paused for the sensation to 
sink in, the Antiquary murmured sooth- 
ingly, "Get it off your mind quickly, Old 
Man," the Critic remarked that the Camp- 
bells were surely coming, and the Patron 
asked with nettled dignity how the Painter 
knew. 

"Know?" he resumed, having had the 
necessary fillip. "Because I knew him, 
smelled his stogy, and drank with him in 
Cedar Street. It was some time in the early 
'70s, when a passion for Corot's opales- 
cences (with the Critic's permission) was 
the latest and most knowing fad. As a realist 
I half mistrusted the fascination, but I felt 
it with the rest, and whenever any of the 
besotted dealers of that rude age got in an 
* Early Morning' or a ' Dance of Nymphs,' 
I was there among the first. For another 
reason, my friend Rosenheim, then in his 
modest beginnings as a marchand-amateur, 
was likely to appear at such private views. 
With his infallible tact for future salability, 
he was already unloading the Institute, and 
laying in Barbizon. Find what he's buying 
now, and I'll tell you the next fad." 



4 CAMPBELL COROT 

The Critic nodded sagaciously, knowing 
that Rosenheim, who now poses as collect- 
ing only for his pleasure, has already begun 
to affect the drastic productions of certain 
clever young Spanish realists. 
" Rosenheim," the Painter pursued, "really 
loved his Corot quite apart from prospect- 
ive values. I fancy the pink silkiness of 
the manner always appeals to Jews, re- 
calling their most authentic taste, the 
eighteenth-century Frenchman. Anyhow, 
Rosenheim took his new love seriously, fol- 
lowed up the smallest examples religiously, 
learned to know the forgeries that were al- 
ready afloat — in short, was the best in- 
formed Corotist in the city. It was ap- 
propriate, then, that my first relations with 
the poet-painter should have the sanction 
of Rosenheim's presence." 
Lingering upon the reminiscence, the 
Painter sopped up the last bit of anchovy 
paste, drained his toby, and pushed it 
away. The rest of us settled back com- 
fortably for a long session, as he persisted. 
" Rosenheim wrote me one day that he had 
got wind of a Corot in a Cedar Street 



CAMPBELL COROT 5 

auction room. It might be, so his news 
went, the pendant to the one he had re- 
cently bought at the Bolton sale. He 
suggested we should go down together and 
see. So we joggled down Broadway in the 
'bus, on what looked rather like a wild- 
goose chase. But it paid to keep the run 
of Cedar Street in those days; one might 
find anything. The gilded black walnut 
was pushing the old mahogany out of good 
houses; Wyant and Homer Martin were 
occasionally raising the wind by ventures 
in omnibus sales; then there were old mas- 
ters which one cannot mention because 
nobody would believe. But that particular 
morning the Corot had no real competitor; 
its radiance fairly filled the entire junk- 
room. Rosenheim was in raptures. As 
luck would have it, it was indeed the 
companion-piece to his, and his it should 
be at all costs. In Cedar Street, he rea- 
sonably felt, one might even hope to get it 
cheap. Then began our duo on the theme 
of atmosphere, vibrancy, etc. — brand new 
phrases, mind you, in those innocent days. 
As Rosenheim for a moment carried the 



6 CAMPBELL COROT 

burden alone, I stepped up to the canvas 
and saw, with a shock, that the paint was 
about two days old. Under what condi- 
tions I wondered — for did I not know the 
ways of paint — could a real Corot have 
come over so fresh? I more than scented 
trickery. A sketch overpainted — for it 
seemed above the quality of a sheer 
forgery — or was the case worse than that? 
Meanwhile not a shade of doubt was in 
Rosenheim's mind. As I canvassed the 
possibilities his sotto-voce ecstasies con- 
tinued, to the vast amusement, as I per- 
ceived, of a sardonic stranger who hovered 
unsteadily in the background. This ill- 
omened person was clad in a statesmanlike 
black frock-coat with trousers of similar 
funereal shade. A white lawn tie, much 
soiled, and congress gaiters, much frayed, 
were appropriate details of a costume in- 
evitably topped off with an army slouch 
hat that had long lacked the brush. He 
was immensely long and sallow, wore a 
drooping moustache vaguely blonde, be- 
tween the unkempt curtains of which a 
thin cheroot pointed heavenward. As he 



CAMPBELL COROT 7 

walked nervously up and down, with a 
suspiciously stilted gait, he observed Ros- 
enheim with evident scorn and the picture 
with a strange pride. He was not merely 
odd, but also offensive, for as Rosenheim 
whispered c Comme c*est beau! J there was 
an unmistakable snort; when he continued, 
c Mais c'est exquisP the snort broadened 
into a mighty chuckle; while as he con- 
cluded 'Most luminous!' the chuckle be- 
came articulate, in an 'Oh, shucks!' that 
could not be ignored. 

" 'You seem to be interested, sir,' Rosen- 
heim remarked. 'You bet!' was the terse 
response. 'May I inquire the cause of your 
concern ?' Rosenheim continued placidly. 
With a most exasperating air of willingness 
to please, the stranger rejoined: 'Why, I 
jest took a simple pleasure, sir, in seeing an 
amachoor like you talking French about a 
little thing I painted here in Cedar Street.' 
For a moment Rosenheim was too indig- 
nant to speak, then he burst out with: 'It's 
an infernal lie; you could no more paint 
that picture than you could fly.' 'I did 
paint it, jest the same,' pursued the 



8 CAMPBELL COROT 

stranger imperturbably, as Rosenheim, to 
make an end of the insufferable wag, 
snapped out sarcastically, 'Perhaps you 
painted its mate, then, the Bolton Corot.' 
'The one that sold for three thousand dol- 
lars last week? Of course I painted it; it's 
the best nymph scene I ever done. Don't 
get mad, mister; I paint most of the Corots. 
I'm glad you like 'em/ 
"For a moment I feared that little Rosen- 
heim would smite the lank annoyer dead in 
his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' 
I cried. 'The man is drunk or crazy or he 
may even be right; the paint on this picture 
isn't two days old.' 'Correct,' declared 
the stranger. 'I finished it day before 
yesterday for this sale.' Then a marked 
change came over Rosenheim's manner. 
He grew positively deferential. It de- 
lighted him to meet an artist of talent; 
they must know each other better. Cards 
were exchanged, and Rosenheim read with 
amazement the grimy inscription 'Camp- 
bell Corot y Landscape Artist.'* 'Yes, that's 
my painting name,' Campbell Corot said 
modestly; 'and my pictures are almost 



CAMPBELL COROT 9 

equally as good as his'n, but not quite. 
They do for ordinary household purposes. 
I really hate to see one get into a big sale 
like the Bolton; it don't seem honest, but 
I can't help it; nobody 'd believe me if I 
told/ Rosenheim's demeanour was courtly 
to a fault as he pleaded an engagement and 
bade us farewell. Already apparently he 
divined a certain importance in so re- 
markable a gift of mimicry. I stayed be- 
hind, resolved on making the nearer ac- 
quaintance of Campbell Corot." 

"Rosenheim clearly understands the art 
of business," interrupted the Antiquary. 
"And the business of art," added the 
Critic. "Could your seedy friend have 
painted my Corot?" said the Patron in 
real distress. "Why not?" continued the 
Painter remorselessly. "Only hear me 
out, and you may judge for yourself. 
Anyhow, let's drop your Corot; we were 
speaking of mine." 

"To make Campbell Corot's acquaint- 
ance proved more difficult than I had ex- 



io CAMPBELL COROT 

j. . 

pected. He confided to me immediately 
that he had been a durn fool to give him- 
self away to my friend, but talk was 
cheap, and people never believed him, 
anyway. Then gloom descended, and my 
professions of confidence received only the 
most surly responses. He unbent again 
for a moment with, ' Painter feller, you 
knowed the pesky ways of paint, didn't 
yer?' but when I followed up this promis- 
ing lead and claimed him as an associate, 
he repulsed me with, c Stuck up, ain't yer? 
Parley French like your friend? S'pose 
you've showed in the Saloon at Paris.' 
Giving it up, I replied simply: 'I have; I'm 
a landscape painter, too, but I'd like to say 
before I go that I should be glad to be able 
to paint a picture like that.' Looking me 
in the eye and seeing I meant it, ' Shake!' 
he replied cordially. As we shook, his 
breath met me fair: it was such a breath 
as was not uncommon in old-time Cedar 
Street. Gentlemen who affect this aroma 
are, I have noticed, seldom indifferent to 
one sort of invitation, so I ventured 
hardily: 'You know Nickerson's Glengyle, 



CAMPBELL COROT n 

sir; perhaps you will do me the favour to 
drink a glass with me while we chat/ 
Here I could tell you a lot about Nicker- 
son's." "Don't," begged the Critic, who 
is abstemious. " I will only say, then, that 
Nickerson's, once an all-night refuge, 
closes now at three — desecration has made 
it the yellow marble office of a teetotaler in 
the banking line — and the Glengyle, that 
blessed essence of the barley, heather, peat, 
and mist of Old Scotland, has been taken 
over by an exporting company, limited. 
Sometimes I think I detect a little of it in 
the poisons that the grocers of Glasgow and 
Edinburgh send over here, or perhaps I 
only dream of the old taste. Then it was 
itself, and by the second glass Campbell 
Corot was quite ready to soliloquise. You 
shall have his story about as he told it, but 
abridged a little in view of your tender ages 
and the hour. 

"John Campbell had grown up content- 
edly on the old farm under Mount Everett 
until one summer when a landscape painter 
took board with the family. At first the 



12 CAMPBELL COROT 

lad despised the gentle art as unmanly, but 
as he watched the mysterious processes he 
longed to try his hand. The good-natured 
Dusseldorfian willingly lent brushes and 
bits of millboard upon which John pro- 
ceeded to make the most lurid confections. 
The forms of things were, of course, an ob- 
stacle to him, as they are to everybody. 'I 
never could drore,' he told me, 'and I never 
wanted to drore like that painter chap. 
Why he'd fill a big canvas with little trees 
and rocks and ponds till it all seemed no 
bigger than a Noah's ark show. I used to 
ask him, "Why don't you wait till evening 
when you can't see so much to drore?" ' 
To such criticism the painter naturally 
paid no attention, while John devoted 
himself to sunsets and the tube of crimson 
lake. From babyhood he had loved the 
purple hour, and his results, while without 
form and void, were apparently not wholly 
unpleasing, for his master paid him the 
compliment of using one or two such 
sketches as backgrounds, adding merely the 
requisite hills, houses, fences, and cows. 
These collaborations were mentioned not 



CAMPBELL COROT 13 

unworthily beside the sunsets of Kensett 
and Cropsey next winter at the Academy. 
From that summer John was for better or 
worse a painter. 

"His first local success was, curiously 
enough, an historical composition, in which 
the village hose company, almost swallowed 
up by the smoke, held in check a confla- 
gration of Vesuvian magnitude. The few 
visible figures and Smith's turning-mill, 
which had heroically been saved in part 
from the flames, were jotted in from photo- 
graphs. Happily this work, for which the 
Alert Hose Company subscribed no less 
than twenty-five dollars, providing also a 
fifty-dollar frame, fell under the appreci- 
ative eye of the insurance adjuster who 
visited the very ruins depicted. Recognis- 
ing immediately an uncommonly available 
form of artistic talent, this gentleman pro- 
cured John a commission as painter in or- 
dinary to the Vulcan, with orders to come 
at once to town at excellent wages. By his 
twentieth year, then, John was established 
in an attic chamber near the North River 
with a public that, barring change in the 



i 4 CAMPBELL COROT 

advertising policy of the Vulcan, must in- 
evitably become national. For the lithog- 
raphers he designed all manner of holo- 
causts; at times he made tours through the 
counties and fixed the incandescent mouth 
of Vulcan's forge, the figures within being 
merely indicated, on the face of a hundred 
ledges. That was a shame, he freely ad- 
mitted to me; the rocks looked better with- 
out. In fact, John Campbell's first manner 
soon came to be a humiliation and an intol- 
erable bondage. He felt the insincerity of 
it deeply. 'You see, it's this way,' he ex- 
plained to me, 'you don't see the shapes by 
firelight or at sunset, but you have seen 
them all day and you know they're there. 
Nobody that don't have those shapes in his 
brush can make you feel them in a picture. 
Everybody puts too little droring into sun- 
sets. Nobody paints good ones, not even 
Inness [we must remember it was in the 
early '70s], except a Frenchman called 
Roosoo. He takes 'em very late, which is 
best, and he can drore some too.' " 
"A very decent critic, your alcoholic 
friend," the Critic remarked. 



CAMPBELL COROT 15 

"He was full of good ideas, as you shall 
see," the story-teller replied. "I quite 
agree with you, if the bad whisky could 
have been kept away from him he might 
have shone in your profession. Anyhow, 
he had the makings of an honest man in 
him, and when the Vulcan enlarged its 
cliff-painting programme, he cut loose 
bravely. Then followed ten lean years of 
odd jobs, with landscape painting as a 
recreation, and the occasional sale of a 
canvas on a street corner as a great event. 
When his need was greatest he consented 
to earn good wages composing symbolical 
door designs for the Meteor Coach Com- 
pany, but that again he could not endure 
for long. Later in the intervals of colouring 
photographs, illuminating window-shades, 
or whatever came to hand, he worked out 
the theory which finally led him to the feet 
of Corot. It was, in short, that the proper 
subject for an artist deficient in linear de- 
sign is sunrise. 

"He explained the matter to me with 
zest. 'By morning you've half forgotten 
the look of things. All night you've seen 



16 CAMPBELL COROT 

only dreams that don't have any true form, 
and when the first light comes, nothing 
shows solid for what it is. The mist un- 
covers a little here and there, and you won- 
der what's beneath. It's all guesswork and 
nothing sure. Take any morning early 
when I look out of my attic window to the 
North River. There's nothing but a heap 
of fog, grey or pink, as there's more or less 
sun behind. It gets a little thick over 
toward Jersey, and that may be the shore, 
or again it mayn't. Then a solid bit of 
vi'let shows high up, and I guess it's Castle 
Stevens, but perhaps it ain't. Then a 
pale-yellow streak shoots across the river 
farther up and I take it to be the Palisades, 
but again it may be jest a ray of sunshine. 
You see there really ain't no earth; it's all 
air and light. That's what a man that 
can't drore ought to paint; that's what my 
namesake, Cameel Corot, did paint better 
than any one that ever lived.' 
"At this point of his confession John 
Campbell glared savagely at me for assent, 
and set down a sadly frayed and noxious 
stogy on Nickerson's black walnut. I has- 



CAMPBELL COROT 17 

tened to agree, though much of the doc- 
trine was heresy to a realist, only object- 
ing: 'But one really has to draw a scene 
such as you describe just like any other. 
In fact, the drawing of atmosphere is the 
most difficult branch of our art. Many 
very good painters, like my master, Cour- 
bet, have given it up.' ' Corbet !' he re- 
plied contemptuously; 'he didn't give it 
up; he never even seen it. But don't I 
know it's hard, sir? For years I tried to 
paint it, and I never got nothing but the 
fog; when I put in more I lost that. 
They're pretty, those sketches — like wa- 
tered silk or the scum in the docks with the 
sun on it; but, Lord, there ain't nothing 
into 'em, and that's the truth. At last, 
after fumbling around for years, I hap- 
pened to walk into Vogler's gallery one 
day and saw my first Corot. Ther' it 
was — all I had been trying for. It was 
the kind of droring I knew ought to be, 
where a man sets down more what he feels 
than what he knows. I knew I was be- 
ginning too late, but I loved that way of 
working. I saw all the Corots I could, and 



18 CAMPBELL COROT 

began to paint as much as I could his way. 
I got almost to have his eye, but of course 
I never got his hand. Nobody could, I 
guess, not even an educated artist like you, 
or they'd all a don* it.' 

"After this awakening John Campbell be- 
gan the artist's life afresh with high hopes. 
His first picture in the sweet new style was 
honestly called ' Sunrise in Berkshire, 5 
though he had interwoven with his own 
reminiscences of the farm several motives 
from various compositions of his great 
exemplar. He signed the canvas Campbell 
Corot, in the familiar capital letters, be- 
cause he didn't want to take all the credit; 
because he desired to mark emphatically 
the change in his manner, and because it 
struck him as a good painting name justi- 
fied by the resemblance between his sur- 
name and the master's Christian name. It 
was a heartfelt homage in intention. If the 
disciple had been familiar with Renaissance 
usages, he would undoubtedly have signed 
himself John of Camille. 
" ' Sunrise in Berkshire' fetched sixty dol- 



CAMPBELL COROT 19 

lars in a downtown auction room, the high- 
est price John had ever received; but this 
was only the beginning of a bewildering rise 
in values. When John next saw the picture, 
Campbell had been deftly removed, and 
the landscape, being favourably noticed 
in the press, brought seven hundred dollars 
in an uptown salesroom. John happened 
on it again in Beilstein's gallery, where the 
price had risen to thirteen hundred dol- 
lars — a tidy sum for a small Corot in those 
early days. At that figure it fell to a noted 
collector whose walls it still adorns. Here 
Campbell Corot's New England conscience 
asserted itself. He insisted on seeing Beil- 
stein in person and told him the facts. 
Beilstein treated the visitor as an impostor 
and showed him the door, taking his ad- 
dress, however, and scornfully bidding him 
make good his story by painting a similar 
picture, unsigned. For this, if it was worth 
anything, the dealer promised he should be 
liberally paid. Naturally Campbell Corot's 
professional dander was up, and he pro- 
duced in a week a Corotish ' Dance of 
Nymphs/ if anything, more specious than 



2o CAMPBELL COROT 

the last. For this Beilstein gave him 
twenty-five dollars, and within a month 
you might have seen it under the skylight 
of a country museum, where it is still rever- 
ently explained to successive generations 
of school-children. 

"If Campbell Corot had been a stronger 
character, he might have made some stand 
against the fraudulent success his second 
manner was achieving. But, unhappily, in 
those experimental years he had acquired 
an experimental knowledge of the whisky 
of Cedar Street. His irregular and spend- 
thrift ways had put him out of all lines of 
employment. Besides, he was consumed 
by an artist's desire to create a kind of 
picture that he could not hope to sell as 
his own. Nor did the voice of the tempter, 
Beilstein, fail to make itself heard. He 
offered an unfailing market for the little 
canvases at twenty-five and fifty dollars, 
according to size. There was a patron to 
supply unlimited colours and stretchers, a 
pocket that never refused to advance a 
small bill when thirst or lesser need found 
Campbell Corot penniless. Almost in- 



CAMPBELL COROT 21 

evitably he passed from occasional to 
habitual forgery, consoling himself with 
the thought that he never signed the pict- 
ures and, before the law at least, was 
blameless. But signed they all were some- 
where between their furtive entrance at 
Beilstein's basement and their appearance 
on his walls or in the auction rooms. Of 
course it wasn't the blackguard Beilstein 
who forged the five magic letters; he would 
never take the risk, 'Blast his dirty soul!' 
cried Campbell Corot aloud, as he seethed 
with the memory of his shame. He rose as 
if for summary vengeance, to the amaze- 
ment of the quiet topers in the room. For 
some time his utterance had been getting 
both excited and thick, and now I saw with 
a certain chagrin that the Glengyle had 
done its work only too well. It was a ques- 
tion not of hearing his story out, but of 
getting him home before worse befell. By 
mingled threats and blandishments I got 
him away from Nickerson's, and after an 
adventurous passage down Cedar Street, I 
deposited him before his attic door, in a 
doubtful frame of mind, being alternately 



22 CAMPBELL COROT 

possessed by the desire to send Beilstein to 
hell and to pray for the eternal welfare of 
the only genuine Corot." 
"You certainly make queer acquaint- 
ances," ejaculated the Patron uneasily. 
"Hurry up and tell us the rest; it's grow- 
ing late," insisted the Antiquary, as he 
beckoned for the bill. 

"I saw Campbell Corot only once more, 
but occasionally I saw his work, and it told 
a sad tale of deterioration. The sunrises 
and nymphals no longer deceived anybody, 
having fallen nearly to the average level of 
auction-room impressionism. I was not 
surprised, then, when running into him 
near Nickerson's one day I felt that drink 
and poverty were speeding their work. 
He tried to pass me unrecognised, but I 
stopped him, and once more the invitation 
to a nip proved irresistible. My curiosity 
was keen to learn his attitude toward his 
own work and that of his master, and I at- 
tempted to draw him out with a crass 
compliment. He denied me gently. 'The 
best things I do, or rather did, young feller, 
are jest a little poorer than his worst. Be- 



CAMPBELL COROT 23 

tween ourselves, he painted some pretty 
bum things. Some I suppose he did, like 
me, by lamplight. Some he sketched with 
one hand while he was lighting that there 
long pipe with the other. Sometimes, I 
guess, he was in a hurry for the money. 
Now, when I'm painting my level best, 
like I used to could, mine are about like 
that. But people don't know the differ- 
ence about him or about me; and mine, as 
I told your Jew friend, are plenty good 
enough for every-day purposes. Used to 
be, anyway. Nobody can paint like his 
best. Think of it, young feller, you and 
me is painters and know what it means — 
jest a little dirty paint on white canvas, 
and you see the creeping of the sunrise 
over the land, the breathing of the mist 
from the fields, and the twinkling of the 
dew in the young leaves. Nobody but him 
could paint that, and I guess he never 
knowed how he done it; he jest felt it in his 
brush, it seems to me.' 
" After this outburst little more was to be 
got from him. In a word, he had gone to 
pieces and knew it. Beilstein had cast him 



24 CAMPBELL COROT 

off; the works in the third manner hung 
heavy in the auction places. Leaning over 
the table, he asked me, ' Who was the gent 
that said, "My God, what a genius I had 
when I done that!"?' I told him that the 
phrase was given to many, but that I be- 
lieved Swift was the gent. 'Jest so,' Camp- 
bell Corot responded; c that's the way I felt 
the last time I saw Beilstein. He'd been 
sending back my things and, for a joke, I 
suppose, he wrote me to come up and see a 
real Corot, and take the measure of the job 
I was tackling. So up to the avenue I 
went, and Beilstein first gave me my dress- 
ing down and then asked me into the red- 
plush private room where he takes the big 
oil and wheat men when they want a little 
art. There on the easel was a picture. He 
drew the cloth away and said: "Now, 
Campbell, that's what we want in our 
business." As sure as you're born, sir, it 
was a "Dance of Nymphs" that I done 
out of photographs eight years ago. But I 
can't paint like that no more. I know the 
way your friend Swift felt; only I guess my 
case is worse than his.' 



CAMPBELL COROT 25 

"The mention of photographs gave me a 
clue to Campbell Corot's artistic methods. 
It appeared that Beilstein had kept him in 
the best reproductions of the master. But 
on this point the disciple was reticent, 
evading my questions by a motion to go. 
'Pm not for long probably,' he said, as he 
refused a second glass. 'You've been pa- 
tient while Pve talked — I can't to most — • 
and I don't want you to remember me 
drunk. Take good care of yourself, and, 
generally speaking, don't start your whisky 
till your day's painting is done.' I stood 
for some minutes on the corner of Broad- 
way as his gaunt form merged into the 
glow that fell full into Cedar Street from 
the setting sun. I wondered if the hour 
recalled the old days on the farm and the 
formation of his first manner. 
"However that may be, his premonition 
was right enough. The next winter I read 
one morning that the body of Campbell 
Corot had been taken from the river at the 
foot of Cedar Street. It was known that 
his habits were intemperate, and it was 
probable that returning from a saloon he 



26 CAMPBELL COROT 

had walked past his door and off the dock. 
His cards declared him to be a landscape 
painter, but he was unknown in the artistic 
circles of the city. I wrote to the authori- 
ties that he was indeed a landscape painter 
and that the fact should be recorded on his 
slab in Potter's Field. I was poor and that 
was the only service I could do to his 
memory." 

The Painter ceased. We all rose to go and 
were parting at the doorway with sundry 
hems and haws when the Patron piped up 
anxiously, "Do you suppose he painted 
my Corot?" "I don't know and I don't 
care," said the Painter shortly. "Damn 
it, man, can't you see it's a human not a 
picture-dealing proposition?" sputtered the 
Antiquary. "That's right," echoed the 
Critic, as the three locked arms for the 
stroll downtown, leaving the bewildered 
Patron to find his way alone to the Park 
East. 




THE DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

HE train swung down a tawny 
New England river towards 
Prestonville as I reviewed the 
stages of a great curiosity. At 
last I was to see the Del Puente Giorgione. 
Long before, when the old pictures first 
began to speak to me, I had learned that 
the critic Mantovani, the master of us 
all, owned an 'early Giorgione, unfinished 
but of marvellous beauty. At his death, 
strangely enough, it was not found among 
his pictures, which were bequeathed as 
every one knows to the San Marcello 
Museum. The next word I had of it was 
when Anitchkoff, Mantovani's disciple and 
successor, reported it in the Del Puente 
Castle in the Basque mountains. He 
added a word on its importance though 
avowedly knowing it only from a photo- 
graph. It appeared that Mantovani in his 
last days had given the portrait to his old 
friend the Carlist Marquesa del Puente, in 
27 



28 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

whose cause — picturesque but irrelevant 
detail — he had once drawn sword. Anitch- 
kofPs full enthusiasm was handsomely re- 
corded after he had made the pilgrimage 
to the Marquesa's crag. One may still 
read in that worthy but short-lived organ 
of sublimity, "Le Mihrab," his apprecia- 
tion of the Del Puente Giorgione, which he 
describes as a Giambellino blossoming into 
a Titian, with just the added exquisite- 
ness that the world has only felt since Big 
George of Castelfranco took up the brush. 
How the panel exchanged the Pyrenees for 
the North Shore passed dimly through my 
mind as barely worth recalling. It was 
the usual story of the rich and enterprising 
American collector. Hanson Brooks had 
bought it and hung it in "The Curlews," 
where it bid fair to become legendary once 
more, but at last had lent it with his other 
pictures to the Prestonville Museum ot 
Science and the Fine Arts, the goal of my 
present quest. While the picture lay perdu 
at Brooks's, there had been disquieting gos- 
sip; the Pretorian Club, which is often 
terribly right in such matters, agreed that 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 29 

he had been badly sold. None of this I 
believed for an instant. What could one 
doubt in a picture owned by Mantovani 
and certified by AnitchkofF? Upon this 
point of rumination the train stopped at 
Prestonville. 

My approach to the masterpiece was rev- 
erently deliberate. At the American House 
I actually lingered over the fried steak and 
dallied long with the not impossible mince 
pie. Thus fortified, I followed Main Street 
to the Museum — one of those depressingly 
correct new-Greek buildings with which 
the country is being filled. Skirting with a 
shiver the bleak casts from the antique in 
the atrium and mounting an absurdly 
spacious staircase, I reached a doorway 
through which the chef d'ceuvre of my 
dreams confronted me cheerlessly. Its 
nullity was appalling; from afar I felt the 
physical uneasiness that an equivocal 
picture will usually produce in a devotee. 
To approach and study it was a civility I 
paid not to itself but to its worshipful 
provenance. A slight inspection told all 
there was to tell. The paint was palpably 



30 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

modern; the surface would not have re- 
sisted a pin. In style it was a distant echo 
of the Giorgione at Berlin. Yet, as I gazed 
and wondered sadly, I perceived it was not 
a vulgar forgery — indeed not a forgery at 
all. It had been done to amuse some 
painter of antiquarian bent. I even 
thought, too rashly, that I recognised the 
touch of the youthful Watts, and I could 
imagine the studio revel at which he or 
another had valiantly laid in a Giorgione 
before the punch, as his contribution to 
the evening's merriment. The picture 
upon the pie wrought a black depression 
that some excellent Japanese paintings 
were powerless to dispel. As my train 
crawled up the tawny river, now inky, my 
thoughts moved helplessly about the dark 
enigma — "How could Mantovani have 
possessed such rubbish? How could 
AnitchkofF, enjoying the use of his eyes 
and mind, have credited it for a moment? 
My reflections preposterously failed to rest 
upon the obvious clue, the mysterious 
Marquesa del Puente, and it was not 
until I met AnitchkofF, some years later, 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 31 

that I began to divine the woman in the 
case. 

After ten years of absence he had come 
back to America on something like a 
triumphal tour. I had promptly paid my 
respects and now through a discreet per- 
sistency was to have a long evening with 
him at the Pretorian. As I studied the 
dinner card, guessing at his gastronomic 
tastes, my mind was naturally on his re- 
markable career. Anitchkoff, brought from 
Russia in childhood, had grown up in 
decent poverty in a small New England 
city. Very early he showed the intellectual 
ambition that distinguished all the family. 
Our excellent public schools made his way 
to the nearest country college easy and 
inevitable. There began the struggle the 
traces of which might be read in an almost 
melancholy gravity quite unnatural in a 
man become famous at thirty-five. With 
the facility of his race he learned all the 
languages in the curriculum and read fero- 
ciously in many literatures. In his junior 
year the appearance of a great and genial 
work on psychology made him the meta- 



32 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

physician he has remained through all 
digressions in the connoisseurship and 
criticism of art. How his search for ulti- 
mate principles involved a mastery of the 
minutiae of the Venetian school I could 
only guess. But one could imagine the 
process. Seeking to ground his personal 
preferences in a general aesthetic, he would 
have found his data absolutely untrust- 
worthy. How could he presume to inter- 
pret a Giorgione or a Titian when what 
they painted was undetermined? Upon 
these shifting sands he declined to rear his 
tabernacle. To the work of classifying the 
Venetians, accordingly, he set himself with 
dogged honesty. As a matter of course 
Mantovani became his chief preceptor — 
Mantovani who first discovered that the 
highly complex organism we call a work of 
art has a morphology as definite as that of 
a trilobite; that the artist may no more 
transcend his own forms than a crustacean 
may become a vertebrate. For a matter of 
ten years Anitchkoff^ espousing a fairly 
Franciscan poverty, gave himself to this 
ungrateful task. How he contrived to live 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 33 

in the shadow of the great galleries was a 
mystery the solution of which one sus- 
pected to be bitter and heroic. Gradually 
recognition as an expert came to him and 
with it an irksome success. His fame had 
developed duties, and while his studies in 
aesthetics remained fragmentary, he was 
persistently consulted on all manner of 
trivialities. From Piedmont to the con- 
fine of Dalmatia he knew every little mas- 
ter that ever made or marred panel or 
plaster, and he paid the penalty of such 
knowledge. Surmising the tragedy of his 
career and its essential nobility I had dis- 
counted the ugly rumours connecting him 
with the sale of the Del Puente Giorgione. 
When every fool learned that the Giorgione 
at "The Curlews" was false, many inferred 
that Anitchkoff, having praised it, must 
have a hand in Brooks's bad bargain — a 
conclusion sedulously put about and finally 
hinted in cold type by certain rival critics. 
Personally I knew that Brooks had bagged 
his find under quite other advice, but while 
I would always have sworn to AnitchkofFs 
complete integrity in the whole Del Puente 



34 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

matter, my wonder also grew at so hideous 
a lapse of judgment. I hopelessly fell back 
upon such banalities as the errability . of 
mankind, being conscious all the time that 
some special and most curious infatuation 
must underlie this particular error. Anitch- 
kofFs card interrupted some such train of 
thought. He came in quietly as sunshine 
after fog. His face between the curtains 
reminded me strangely of the awful mo- 
ment in the Prestonville Museum — para- 
doxically, for he was as genuine and re- 
assuring as the Del Puente Giorgione had 
been baffling and false. 
We began dinner with the stiffness of men 
between whom much is unsaid. As the 
oystershells departed, however, we had 
found common memories. He recalled de- 
lightfully those little northern towns in the 
debatable region which from a critic's 
point of view may be considered Lombard 
or Venetian, with a tendency to be neither 
but rather a Transalpine Bavaria. To me 
also the glow of the Burgundy on the table- 
cloth brought back strange provincial 
altarpieces in this territory — marvels in 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 35 

crimson and gold, and a riddle for the con- 
noisseur. Then the talk reached higher 
latitudes. He mused aloud about that 
very simple reaction which we call the 
sense of beauty and have resolutely so- 
phisticated ever since criticism existed — 
I intent meanwhile and eating most of a 
mallard as sanguine as a decollation of the 
Baptist. By the cheese Anitchkoff seemed 
confident of my sympathy, and I, having 
found nothing amiss in him except an im- 
perfect enjoyment of the pleasures of the 
table, was planning how least imprudently 
might be raised the topic of the Del Puente 
Giorgione. But it was he who spoke first. 
At the coffee he asked me with admirable 
simplicity what people said about the af- 
fair, and I answered with equal candour. 
"You too have wondered," he continued. 
"Of course, but nothing worse," I replied. 
Then with the hesitancy of a man ap- 
proaching a dire chagrin, and yet with a 
rueful appreciation of the humour of the 
predicament that I despair of reproducing, 
he began: 
"It happened about this way. When I 



36 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

first came to Italy and began to meet the 
friends of Mantovani, they told me of 
an early Giorgione he owned but rarely 
showed. He used to speak of it affection- 
ately as 'il mio Zorzi,' to distinguish it 
perhaps from the more important example 
he had sold to one of our dilettante iron- 
masters. The little unfinished portrait I 
heard of, from those whose opinion is 
sought, as a superlatively lovely thing. It 
was mentioned with a certain awe; to have 
seen it was a distinction. For years I 
hoped my time would come, but the op- 
portunity was provokingly delayed. How 
should you feel if Mrs. Warrener should 
show you all her things but the great Botti- 
celli ?" I nodded understandingly. Mrs. 
Warrener, for a two minutes' delay in an 
appointment, had debarred me her Whist- 
lers for a year. 

"That's the way Mantovani treated me," 
Anitchkoff continued. "Whenever I dared 
I asked for the 'Zorzi,' and he always put 
me off with a smile. That mystified me, 
for I knew he took a paternal pride in my 
studies, but I never got any more satis- 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 37 

factory answer from him than that the 
'Zorzi' was strong meat for the young; 
one must grow up to it, like S — and P — 
and C — (naming some of his closest dis- 
ciples). These allusions he made repeat- 
edly and with a queer sardonic zest. 
Occasionally he would volunteer the en- 
couragement — for I had long ago dropped 
the subject — ' Cheer up, my boy; your turn 
will come.' When he so Quixotically gave 
the picture to the Marquesa del Puente, it 
seemed, though, as if my turn could never 
come, but I noted that he had been true 
to his doctrine that the 'Zorzi' was only 
for the mature; the Del Puente was said 
to be some years his senior. One knew 
exasperatingly little about her. It was 
said vaguely that Mantovani entertained 
a tender friendship for her, having been 
her husband's comrade in arms in half a 
dozen Carlist revolts. That seemed enough 
to explain the gift." 

At this point Anitchkoff must have caught 
my raised eyebrows, for he added con- 
tritely, "It was odd for Mantovani to give 
away a Giorgione. You're quite right. I 



38 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

was ridiculously young." "You may 
imagine," he pursued, "that the flight of 
the Giorgione to the Pyrenees only em- 
bittered my curiosity. For years I might 
have seen it — shabbily to be sure — by 
merely opening a door when Mantovani 
was occupied, now it had departed to an- 
other planet. Remember those were my 
'prentice days when I lived obscurely and 
absolutely without acquaintance in the 
Marquesa's world. She seemed as inac- 
cessible as the Grand Lama. But you 
know how things will come about in least 
expected ways: Jane Morrison, quite the 
only human being who could possibly have 
known both the Marquesa and me, actu- 
ally gave me a very good letter of intro- 
duction. Then almost oppressive good luck, 
came a note from her mountain Castle, 
telling that the Chatelaine would be glad 
to receive me whenever my travels led me 
her way. She mentioned our common en- 
thusiasm for the Venetians and graciously 
wanted my opinion on the Giorgione, 
which the enemies of Mantovani, her 
friend and my spiritual father, as she 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 39 

called him, had spitefully slandered. Such 
slanders had never happened to reach my 
ears but I was already eager to refute 
them. 

"It was two years later that I made the 
visit on the way to the Prado. All day long 
the diligence rattled up hill away from the 
railroad, and it was dusk before I saw the 
Del Puente stronghold on its crag, evi- 
dently a half hour's walk from the miser- 
able/on^ where the diligence dropped me. 
It was no hour to present an introduction, 
but I bribed a boy to take the letter up 
that night. He returned, disappointingly, 
without an answer. The next morning wore 
on intolerably amid a noisy squalor that I 
could not escape until my summons came. 
It was early afternoon before an equerry 
arrived on muleback bearing the Mar- 
quesas note. She was enchanted to meet 
me but desolated at the unlucky time of 
my arrival. Tomorrow she crossed the 
Pyrenees for Paris and hoped my route 
might lie that way. Meanwhile her home 
was wholly dismantled for the winter, and 
the ordinary hospitalities were denied her. 



4 o DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

But she counted on the pleasure of seeing 
me at four; we might at least chat, drink 
a cup of tea, and pay our homage to Man- 
tovani's 'Zorzi.' Nothing could have been 
more charming or more tantalising. As I 
toiled up towards the Del Puente barbican 
I could feel the precious afternoon light 
dwindling. Breathless I set the castle bell 
a-jangling with something like despair. 
"Heavy doors opened in front of me as I 
passed the sallyport and the grassgrown 
courtyard. At the entrance a majordomo 
in shabby but fairly regal livery greeted 
me and conducted me through empty 
corridors and up a massive staircase. The 
castle was indeed dismantled — apparently 
had been in that condition from all time. 
As my superb guide halted before a door 
which, exceptionally, was curtained, and 
knocked, my heart failed me. I dreaded 
meeting this strange noblewoman, almost 
regretted the nearness of the 'Zorzi,' 
knowing the actual colours could hardly 
surpass those of my fancy. The little 
speeches I had been rehearsing resolved 
themselves into silence again as I saw her 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 41 

by a tiny fire; a compelling apparition, 
erect, with snowy hair waving high over 
burning black eyes. Today when I coldly 
analyse her fascination I recall nothing but 
these simple elements. She permitted not 
a moment of the shyness that has always 
plagued me. What our words were I do 
not now know, but I know that I kissed 
the two hands she held out to me as she 
called me Mantovani's son and her friend. 
Then I talked as never before or since, told 
her of my struggles and ambitions, and 
from time to time I was mute so that I 
might hear the deep contralto of the 
French she spoke perfectly but with 
Spanish resonance. There was probably 
tea. Anyhow the light went away from the 
deep casements unnoticed, and it was she 
who, with a chiding finger, recalled me to 
duty and the Giorgione. c Wretch,' said 
she, 'you are here to see it not me. The 
light is going and your devoirs yet unpaid/ 
"As she took my arm and led me through 
the gallery, I had an odd presentiment of 
going towards a doom. While I followed 
her up a winding stair, the misgiving in- 



42 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

creased. Did venerable lemurs inhabit the 
Basque mountains? Could so magnificent 
an old age be of this earth? An ancestral 
shudder from the Steppes came over me. 
It was her ruddy train rustling round the 
turns ahead that aroused these atavistic 
superstitions. But when we stood together 
on the landing all doubts fell away; a broad 
ray of sunlight that struck through an 
open doorway showed her spectral beauty 
to be after all reassuringly corporeal. Over 
the threshold she fairly pushed me with 
the warning, 'The place is holy, we must 
be silent/ For a moment I was staggered 
by the wide pencil of light that shot 
through a porthole and cut the room in 
two. The little octagon, a tower chamber 
I took it to be, was a prism of shadow en- 
closing a shaft of flying golddust. Outside 
it must have been full sunset. Near the 
border line of light and darkness I faintly 
saw the 'Zorzi,' which borrowed a glory 
from the moment and from her. I felt her 
hand on my shoulder and knelt, it seemed 
for minutes, it probably was for seconds 
only. The picture, which I had not seen, 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 43 

much less examined, swam in the twilight 
and became the most gracious that had 
ever met my eyes. The dusk grew as the 
disc of light climbed up the wall and faded. 
She whispered in my ear, ' It is enough for 
now. You shall come again many times.' 
I recall nothing more except the Mar- 
quesas silvery hair and the long line of her 
crimson gown as she bade me 'Au revoir' 
at the head of the great stairs. That night 
in the miserable fonda below I wrote out 
feverishly the notes which you have doubt- 
less read in the 'Mihrab,' and I would give 
my right hand to be able to forget." 
There was a long pause, during which 
Anitchkoff sipped his cognac nervously, 
waiting for my comment. I pressed him 
ruthlessly for the bitter end of the tale. 
"Your hypnotism I grant, but what about 
Mantovani and Brooks?" I asked bluntly. 
"For Mantovani I have no right to speak," 
Anitchkoff replied with dignity. "He was 
my master and I can admit no imputation 
on his memory. Besides, your guess is as 
good as mine. Whether he bought the 
picture in his precritical days, keeping it 



44 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

as a warning and imposing it upon his fol- 
lowers as a hoax — this I can merely con- 
jecture. As for Brooks, the case is simple; 
he couldn't resist a Giorgione at a bargain. 
But since you will, you may as well hear 
the rest of the story — at least my part of 
it. 

"Three years^Iater I wintered in Paris. I 
had run into Bing's for a chat and a look 
at the Hokusais, when who should come in 
but Hanson Brooks in a high state of ela- 
tion. An important purchase had just ar- 
rived. He urged us both to dine and in- 
spect it. Bing was engaged; I glad to 
accept. At dinner Brooks teased me to the 
top of his bent. I was to imagine absolutely 
the most important old master in private 
possession, his for a beggarly price. I de- 
clined to humour him by guessing, and we 
slurred his sweets and coffee to hasten to 
the apartment. On a dressing table faced 
to the wall was a little panel which he 
slowly turned into view. For a moment I 
gasped for joy, it was the Del Puente 
Giorgione; and then an awful misgiving 
overcame me — I saw it as it was. Brooks 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 45 

marked my amazement and, misreading 
the cause, slapped me on the back and 
asked what I thought of that for a hundred 
thousand pesetas. The figure again bowled 
me over. For the picture as it stood it was 
a thousand times too much, while a mere 
tithe of the value of the name the panel 
bore. I blurted out that the price was sus- 
piciously wrong, and added that I must 
see the portrait by daylight before ventur- 
ing an opinion. The thought that Manto- 
vani had owned it for twenty years and 
more made a sleepless night hideous; at 
sunrise my loyalty reasserted itself by a 
lame compromise. 

"I daresay you will not blame me for 
hoping against hope, as I did the next day 
and for some months after, that some- 
where under that modern paint there was 
indeed a sketch by Giorgione's hand. You 
must remember that I could as little doubt 
my own existence as Mantovani's judg- 
ment on such a point. In the sequel it 
seemed as if no humiliation were to be 
spared me. It was Mantovani's chief rival 
and favourite victim, Merck, who after a 



46 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

torturing correspondence had the pleasure 
of telling me he had seen the 'Zorzi' 
painted by the amateur Ricard; it was 
Campbell who, after recommending it to 
Brooks, publicly accused me of dishonest 
brokerage. That's all I can tell you about 
the Del Puente Giorgione." 
I seized his hand impulsively, and clumsily 
offered him, in a breath, whisky, shuffle- 
board, or cowboy pool — sound Pretorian 
remedies for all human woes. These con- 
solations he refused and took his leave. 
Midnight found me in the same chair, 
thinking less of Anitchkoff, whose case 
now lay clear, than of Mantovani and the 
Marquesa del Puente, about whom it 
seemed there still might be something to 
say. 

The chances of a roving life have brought 
some slight addition to the evidence. 
Stopping over a boat at Dieppe, a few 
summers ago, I happened to see my good 
friend Mme. Vezin registered at the 
Casino, where I recognised an acquaint- 
ance or two. That decided me to spend the 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 47 

night and call at her villa. Her salon never 
failed to divert me, for, drawing together 
the most disparate people, she handled 
them with easy generalship. Under her 
chandelier ardent art students from the 
Middle West and the poor relations of 
royalty might be heard exchanging con- 
fidences and foreign tongues. So, as I 
climbed the hill at the verge of the chalk 
and pasture, I felt sure of the unexpected, 
nor was I disappointed. Shrill voices from 
my fellow countrywomen came down the 
garden path and assured me that art had 
accompanied Mme. Vezin in her annual 
retreat from the Luxembourg Gardens. 
Entering I found the same perfect hostess 
and much the old dear, queer scene. I was 
bracing myself for a polyglot evening — 
being with all my travel quite incapable 
of languages — when the little maid an- 
nounced importantly Mme. la Marquise 
del Puente. All rose instinctively as there 
entered an erect white-haired woman 
simply dressed in a black gown along 
which hung a notable crimson scarf. 
Murmuring the indispensable banalities I 



48 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

bowed distantly, meaning to observe her 
impersonally before an encounter. But she 
disarmed me by throwing herself on my 
mercy. She knew me already through dear 
Mr. Hanson Brooks. It was her first visit 
here; I, she saw, was of the household. 
Would I not show her the curiosities and 
protect her from the bores? Sullenly I fol- 
lowed her while she discussed the bijoux 
that littered the shelves, and the deep 
modulations of her voice insensibly molli- 
fied me. I had intended in Anitchkoff's 
behalf to count every wrinkle of her 
seventy-five unhallowed years, but found 
myself instead admiring her cloud of silver 
hair, avoiding the gaze of her black eyes, 
and noting with a kind of fascination the 
precise gestures of her fine hand as she 
took up or set down Mme. Vezin's poor 
little things. 

At last she settled into an armchair, beck- 
oning me to a footstool, and I began to talk 
unconscionably, she urging me on. She 
professed to know my writings — it was of 
course impossible that she should have seen 
those rare anonymous letters to the most 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 49 

ladylike of Boston newspapers: she touched 
my dearest hobby, that republics and 
governments generally must be judged not 
by their politics but by the amenity of the 
social life they foster. Feeling that this was 
witchcraft or divination even more ques- 
tionable, and dreading she had another 
Giorgione to sell, I made a last futile effort 
for freedom, proposing introductions. With 
a phrase she subdued me, and my halting 
French began to be eloquent. I confessed 
my innermost ambition, the creation of a 
criticism learned and judicial in substance 
but impressionistic in form. She dwelt upon 
the beauties of her eyrie in the Basque 
mountains which I must one day see. As 
we chatted on obliviously an audience of 
marvelling art students and baigneurs 
formed about us quietly. Their serried 
faces suddenly revealed to me my igno- 
minious surrender. I started as from a 
dream and, as she bade me not forget to 
call, I kissed her long hand and fled with 
only a curt farewell to my hostess. 
The channel breeze and the scent of the 
clover sobered me up. My pity went out to 



5 o DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

AnitchkofF and then I remembered that I 
had seen Fouquart at the Casino. It seemed 
too good to be true. Here at Dieppe were 
both this enigmatic Marquesa and the 
prime repository of all authentic scandal 
of our times. For the old dandy Fouquart 
had lived not wisely but too well through 
three generations of cosmopolitan gal- 
lantry. Had the censorship and his literary 
parts permitted, he could have written a 
chronicle of famous ladies that would put 
the Sieur de Brantome's modest attempt 
to shame. I found him among the rabble, 
moodily playing the little horses for five- 
franc pieces, but at the mention of the 
Marquesa del Puente he kindled. 
"A grand woman," he said emphatically, 
as he dragged me to a safe corner, "a 
true model to the anaemic and neurotic sex 
of the day." When asked to specify he told 
me how the energy and passion of twenty 
generations of robber noblefolk had flow- 
ered in her. Scruples or fears she had never 
known. From childhood attached to the 
Carlist cause, she had become the soul of 
that movement in the Pyrenees. It was she 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 5* 

who haggled with British armourers, traced 
routes, planned commissariats, and most 
of all drew from far and near soldiers of 
fortune to captain a hopeless cause. In 
such recruiting, Fouquart implied, her 
loyalty had not flinched at the most per- 
sonal tests. What seemed to mystify Fou- 
quart was that none of these whilom 
champions ever attained the grace of for- 
getfulness. Every year many of these tot- 
tering old gentlemen still reported at 
Castle del Puente, and there she held court 
as of old. He himself, although their rela- 
tions had been not military but civil, oc- 
casionally made so idle a pilgrimage. "To 
the shrine of our Lady of the crimson 
teagown," I ventured. "You too, mon 
vieux!" he chuckled with ironical congrat- 
ulations. Ignoring the impertinence, I in- 
terposed the name of Mantovani. "Our 
respected colleague," Fouquart exclaimed 
delightedly. Before Mantovani fuddled his 
head about pictures he had been a good 
blade, taking anyone's pay. For ten years 
and through half as many little wars he 
had been the Marquesa's titular chief of 



52 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

staff. Her husband? Well, her husband was 
a good Carlist — and a true philosopher. 
As I tore myself away from the impending 
flow of scandal, Fouquart murmured re- 
gretfully. "Must you go? It is a pity. We 
have only begun, a demain" But we had 
really ended, for the next morning, shak- 
ing off a nightmare of a red-robed Lilith 
who tried to sell me a questionable Zeuxis, 
I took the early steamer. Of the Marquesa 
del Puente, whom I believe to be still at 
her castle, I have seen or heard nothing 
since. 

After some reflection in the corner of the 
Pretorian where Anitchkoff once told me 
his story, I have come measurably into 
the clear about the whole matter. Manto- 
vani's position is plain up to a certain 
point. Either the 'Zorzi' was given to him 
or else he bought it in his hopeful youth. 
In either case he surely kept it merely as a 
solemn hoax on his learned contemporaries. 
He may have withheld it from Anitchkoff 
maliciously, or again out of simple con- 
siderateness for a trusting disciple. When 



DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 53 

Mantovani came to set his worldly affairs 
in order, however, it must have struck him 
that the joke could not be perpetuated on 
the walls of the San Marcello gallery, while 
the panel was one that a great connois- 
seur would not willingly have inventoried 
by his executors. It was at this time that 
he bestowed the 'Zorzi' upon the Marquesa 
del Puente, as a final token between them. 
It may fairly be assumed that he knew 
her to be incapable of believing the pre- 
cious souvenir to be a veritable Giorgione. 
Such simplicity as that gift and credulity 
presuppose lay neither in his nature nor 
in hers. Beyond this point certitudes fail 
us lamentably, and we are reduced to an 
exasperating balance of possibilities. Did 
he send the picture as an elaborate and 
unavoidable slight? or was it essentially a 
delicate alms, in view of the Marquesa's 
known poverty and proved resourceful- 
ness? or, again, did he with a deeper per- 
versity set the thing afloat to trouble the 
critical world after he was gone, foreseeing 
perhaps some such international comedy 
as was actually played with the 'ZorzP as 



54 DEL PUENTE GIORGIONE 

leading gentleman? All these things must 
remain problematical for Mantovani can- 
not tell, and the Marquesa del Puente will 
not if indeed she knows. 




THE LOMBARD RUNES 

1ROFESSOR HAUPTMANN 

dropped wearily into his chair 
at the noisy Milanese table 
d'hote and snarled out a surly 
" Mahlzeit" to the assembled feasters. It 
was echoed sweetly from his left with a 
languishing "Mahlzeit, Herr Professor" 
The advance disconcerted him. Resolving 
upon a policy of complete indifference to 
the fluffy and amiable vision beside him, 
he devoted himself singly to the food. The 
risotto diminished as his knife travelled 
rhythmically between the plate and his 
bearded lips. Conceding only the inevita- 
ble, nay the exacted courtesies to his 
neighbour, he performed still greater prodi- 
gies with the green peas, and it was not 
until he leaned back for a deft operation 
with a pocket comb, that the vivacious, 
blue-eyed one got her chance to ask if it 
were not the Herr Professor Hauptmann, 
the great authority on the Lombard 
55 



56 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

tongue. The query floored him; he could 
not deny that it was, and as curlylocks 
began to evince an intelligent interest in 
Lombard matters, his stiffness melted like 
wax under a burning glass. He was soon if 
not the protagonist at least the object of 
an animated, yes fairly intimate conversa- 
tion. 

To non-German eyes the pair were worth 
looking at. He was clad in tightfitting 
sage-green felt, so it appeared, with a su- 
perfluity of straps, buttons, lacings, and 
harness of all sorts. A conical Tyrol hat 
garnished with a cock's plume and faded 
violets was crushed between his back and 
that of the chair. As his large nervous feet 
reached for the chairlegs below, one could 
see an expanse of moss-green stockings, 
only half concealed at the extremities by 
resplendent yellow sandals. Bearded and 
moustached after the military fashion, 
nothing betrayed the professor except the 
myopic droop of the head. As for Fraiilein 
Linda Goritz, no mere man may ade- 
quately describe her. A German new 
woman of the artistic stamp, she was 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 57 

pastelling through Lombardy where the 
Professor was archseologising. Short, crisp 
curls gathered about her boyish head. Her 
general effect was of a plump bonniness 
that might yield agreeably to an audacious 
arm. She cultivated an aggressive pertness 
that would have seemed vulgar, had it not 
been redeemed by something merely frank 
and German. Shortskirted, she wore a 
high-strapped variant of the prevalent 
sandals. The sides of her blue bolero were 
adorned with stilted yellow lilies in the top 
of the Viennese new-art mode. In front her 
shirtwaist appeared cool and white, at the 
sleeves it flowered alarmingly into some- 
thing like an India shawl. A string of mas- 
sive amethysts completed a discord as 
elaborate as a harmony of Richard Strauss. 
Her whole impression was almost as in- 
viting as it was grotesque. One could not 
chat with her without liking her, and it is 
to be suspected that only a very guileless 
or austere male could like her without pro- 
ceeding to manifest attentions. 
By the cheese, she had captured her 
amazed professor, and then she carried him 



58 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

off bodily for coffee in the Arcade. He 
talked little, but it didn't matter, for she 
talked much and well. Nor could a provin- 
cial Saxon scholar be quite indifferent at 
finding himself known to an intelligent and 
much travelled Viennese. A cousin, it ap- 
peared, had followed his lectures and had 
highly extolled the ingenuity of his pho- 
nology of the Lombard tongue, a language 
which was, she must remember — a hesitat- 
ing pause — yes, surely East — "East Ger- 
manic, Ja wohl!" responded the Professor 
thunderously, though idiots had written to 
the contrary. And then he told her at 
length the reasons why, until she pleaded 
her early morning sketching and firmly 
bound him to accompany her the next 
afternoon to the Certosa of Pavia. The 
Herr Professor rarely paid much attention 
to hands, but as he held Fraulein Goritz's 
for Good Night he could not but note that 
it was soft and filled his big grip so well 
that he was sorry when it was gone. He 
dismissed the observation, however, as 
unworthy a philologer and went to sleep 
pondering a new destruction for the knaves 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 59 

who held the Lombard tongue to be not 
East but West Germanic. 
And here, to appreciate the weight and 
importance of Linda's fish, a little explana- 
tion is necessary. Hauptmann was not 
merely a philologer, which is a formidable 
thing in itself, but he belonged to the 
esoteric group that deals with languages 
which have no literature. As he had often 
remarked, any fool could compile a gram- 
mar of a language that has left extensive 
documents; the process was almost me- 
chanical, but to reconstruct a grammar of 
a language that has left practically no re- 
mains, that required acumen. Hauptmann 
did not belong, however, to the trans- 
cendental school that creates purely in- 
ferential languages — East Germanic and 
West, General Teutonic, Original Slavic, 
Indo-European and the like. These are the 
Dii majores and their inventions are as 
complete as if one should detect, say, the 
relation of the little to the big fleas not by 
the cunning use of the microscope but by 
sheer inference. This larger game Haupt- 
mann sagaciously left to others, ranging 



60 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

himself with those who piece together the 
scanty and uncertain fragments of lan- 
guages that have existed but have failed 
to perpetuate themselves in documents and 
inscriptions. Vandalic had powerfully al- 
lured him, and so had Old Burgundian: he 
had had designs also upon Visigothic, and 
had finally chosen Lombard rather than 
the others because the material was not 
merely defective but also delightfully 
vague, affording a wide opportunity for 
genuine philological insight. And indeed to 
classify a language on the basis of a phrase 
scratched on a brooch, the misquotations 
of alien chroniclers, the shifting forms of 
misspelled proper names, is a task com- 
pared with which the fabled reconstruction 
of leviathan from a single bone is mere 
child's play. 

From the mere scraps and hints of Lom- 
bard words in Paul the Deacon and other 
historians anybody but a German would 
have declined to draw any conclusion what- 
ever. But just as every German citizen 
however humble, becomes eventually a 
privy counsellor, a knight of various eagles 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 61 

of diverse classes, an overstationmaster, or 
a royal postman, so German science for the 
past hundred years has permitted no fact 
to languish in its native insignificance. All 
have been promoted to be the sponsors 
of imposing theories. And Hauptmann's 
theory, which got him the degree of 
Ph. D., maxima cum laude, was that Lom- 
bard is an East Germanic tongue. This 
he simple intuited, needing the degree, for 
the fifty mangled Lombard words displayed 
none of those consonants which tending 
to double or of those vowels which still 
vexing us as umlauts, mark a language as 
belonging to the great Eastern or Western 
group. But Hauptmann was first in the 
field, and if it was impossible for him to 
demonstrate that he was right, it was 
equally impossible for anybody else to 
prove that he was wrong. So he stood his 
ground and by dint of continually hitting 
the same nail on the same head he had so 
greatly flourished that he was mentioned 
respectfully as far as the Lombard tongue 
was known, and at thirty-four had passed 
from the honourable but unpaid condition 



62 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

of Privat-dozent to that of Professor Extra- 
ordinarily. 

Now if the Lombards, having ignomini- 
ously taken to Latin after their descent 
upon Italy, had had to wait for Haupt- 
mann to provide them with a language, 
they had left certain more substantial 
traces of themselves in the valley of the 
Po. They died and were buried in state 
with their arms and utensils for the other 
world. So that, while one might well be in 
doubt whether an inscription was Lom- 
bard or not, an antiquary will tell you 
without fail whether a clasp, a spearhead 
or a sword is or is not the work of this 
conquering but too adaptable race. In 
these archaeological matters Hauptmann 
took a forced and languid interest. Dur- 
ing nightmarish hours, when the beer and 
cheese had not mingled aright, he was 
haunted by lines of Lombard runes. Some- 
times they were East Germanic, and that 
was a grief, taking, as it were, the bloom 
from the guess that had made him great; 
and again they were West Germanic, and 
that was awful, the hallucination ending in 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 63 

a mortal struggle with the feather bed 
under which German science is incubated, 
and passing off with an anguished "Don- 
nerwetter! It cannot be Lombard. It is not 
possible." His not infrequent Italian trips 
had, then, an archaeological pretext, and 
this had been more or less the purpose of 
the pilgrimage in which Fraiilein Linda 
had become by main force an alluring if 
disquieting incident. 

If there is anywhere in the world a more 
satisfactory sight than the Pavian Cer- 
tosa, certainly neither Hauptmann nor 
his chance acquaintance had ever seen it. 
And indeed is there anywhere else such 
spaciousness of cloisters, such profusion of 
minutely cut marble, such incrustation, 
for better or worse, of semiprecious stones. 
Surely nothing in a sightseeing way ap- 
proaches it as a money's worth. Fraiilein 
Linda, a superior person who had begun to 
entertain doubts as to the externals of mod- 
ern Austrian palaces and the internals of 
new German liners, reserved her enthusi- 
asms for the pale Borgonones so strangely 
misplaced amid all that splendour. Haupt- 



64 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

mann, on the contrary, admired it all 
impartially. The sense of bulk and in- 
ordinate expensiveness made him for a 
moment almost regret that these later 
Lombards who reared this pile were not of 
the same race-stock with himself. There 
was a moment in which he could have 
claimed them, had principle permitted, as 
West Germans. Rather he soon forgot the 
Lombards in the alternate rapture and 
dismay aroused by the petulant yet 
strangely winning personality beside him. 
Professor Hauptmann was used neither to 
being contradicted nor managed by mere 
women folk, and this afternoon he was un- 
dergoing both experiences simultaneously. 
It was with a feeling of relief that he left 
the Certosa, which seemed in a way her 
territory, and started out with her upon 
the neutral highroad that led to the sta- 
tion. They lingered, for the hour was pro- 
pitious, and their plan was to kill an hour 
or so before the evening train. As the glow 
came over the lowlying fields, the weary 
forms of the labourers began to fill the road. 
At a distance Hauptmann perceived one 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 65 

who importunately offered a small object 
to the sightseers and was as regularly re- 
pulsed. Without waiting for the professor, 
who stood at attention while Fraiilein 
Linda sketched, this beggar or pedlar 
approached and prayed to be allowed to 
show a rare and veritable object of an- 
tiquity, A gruff refusal had already been 
given when she pleaded that they hear the 
peasant talk, and inspect his treasure. 
"Who knows, Herr Professor, but it might 
be Lombard? " " Wohlan," he replied, and 
sullenly took the proffered spearhead. It 
was of iron, patined rather than rusted, 
Lombard in form, and of evident an- 
tiquity. Hauptmann gave it a nearsighted 
look and was about to return it contemptu- 
ously when the peasant urged, "But look 
again, sir, there are letters, a rarity." "I 
dare you to read them," cried Fraiilein 
Linda, and the Professor read painfully 
and copied roughly in his notebook a short 
inscription in some Runic alphabet. A 
scowl followed the reading and the abrupt 
challenge "Where did you find this piece?" 
"In the fields, digging, Padrone," was the 



66 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

answer, " where I dug up also this/' dis- 
playing a bronze clasp of unquestionable 
Lombard workmanship. "Bravo," ex- 
claimed Linda, "now perhaps we shall 
know more about your dear Lombards. I 
congratulate you, Herr Professor, from the 
heart." "Aber nein," he growled back, 
"there were monuments enough already, 
and this is only a bore, for I must buy and 
publish it. Others too may be found in the 
same field, and Lombard will become a 
popular pastime. It is disgusting; compas- 
sionate me. It was the single language that 
permitted truly a-priori approach. It would 
be almost a duty to suppress these accursed 
runes for the sake of scientific method. But 
no; the harm is done. We must be pa- 
tient." 

What the Herr Professor said and con- 
tinued to say as he drove a hard bargain 
with the peasant was but half the story. A 
glance at the runes had shown an awful 
double consonant, and, as if that were not 
enough, an appalling modified vowel. By a 
single word scratched by the untutored 
hand of a rude warrior the most ingenious 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 67 

linguistic hypothesis of our times was shat- 
tered beyond hope of repair. The spear- 
head was Lombard, and Lombard, dire 
reflection to one who had gained fame by 
maintaining the contrary, belonged to the 
West Germanic group of the Teutonic 
tongues. Wild thoughts went through his 
head. He recalled that Paris had seemed 
worth a mass, and considered a plenary 
retraction with a facsimile publication of 
the runes. But as he pondered this course 
the inexpediency of sacrificing so fair a 
theory to this mere brute fact seemed in- 
disputable. He thought also of ascribing 
the doubled consonant and the modified 
vowel to the illiterate blundering of the 
spearman who chiselled the letters. But as 
his fingers traced the sharp and purposeful 
strokes he realised that such a contention 
would be laughed out of the philological 
court. For a mad moment he thought of 
destroying the miserable bit of iron, but in 
the first place that was in itself difficult, 
and then the chattering lady at his side 
knew that he was in possession of a Runic 
inscription probably Lombard. She was 



68 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

widely connected and would certainly bab- 
ble in the very city where his bitter rival 
Professor Anlaut had maintained that 
Lombard was West Germanic. As Haupt- 
mann noticed that the road had become 
deserted, that the dusk had increased, and 
that Fraiilein Linda's observations on the 
luckiness of the "find" were interminable, 
a homicidal fancy just grazed the border of 
his agitated consciousness. But no, that 
would not do either; the scientific con- 
science forbade the destruction of any 
datum however embarrassing. Destroy the 
spearhead he could not, and with a flash of 
intuition it came over him that it must 
simply be lost as promptly and hopelessly 
as possible. 

But this too was by no means easy. As 
they strolled down the road, ditch after 
ditch in the lower fields presented itself as 
apt for the purpose, but never the favour- 
able moment. In fact Fraiilein Linda's 
talk came back to the accursed runes with 
exasperating persistency. They would con- 
firm his theory. She was happy in being 
present at this auspicious discovery. It 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 69 

would be a cause wherefor she should not 
wholly be forgotten. It was this senti- 
mental hint that gave a reasonable hope of 
taking her mind off the runes, and the 
harassed philologer set himself resolutely 
to the task. For her slight advances he 
found bolder responses, and still scanning 
the irrigating ditches closely for an es- 
pecially oozy bottom, he expatiated on the 
loveliness of the afterglow and confirmed 
the recollection of last evening that Fraii- 
lein Linda's dimpled hand might be an 
eminently pleasant thing to hold. Thus 
gradually she was won from the Lombard 
runes to more personal interests, and as in 
the slow progress towards the station they 
neared a bridge, Hauptmann divined the 
spot where the East Germanic hypothesis 
lately in peril of death might receive an 
indefinite reprieve. 

He found Linda, as he now called her, 
neither disinclined to sit on the parapet 
nor to receive the support of his arm. Her 
chatter had dwindled to sighs and ex- 
clamations. He felt the need of a compet- 
ing sound as the chug of the spearhead in 



7 o THE LOMBARD RUNES 

the ditch should announce the discomfiture 
of the West Germans. But before commit- 
ting the telltale runes to this ditch, Haupt- 
mann scanned it carefully over Linda's 
curly head, and considered thoughtfully 
its worthiness to receive so important a 
deposit. The survey could not have been 
more reassuring. Like so many of the main 
irrigating ditches that carry the water of 
Father Po and his tributaries to the lower 
fields, the sluggish stream consisted equally 
of water, weeds, and ooze. No Lombard or 
other object held in that mixture was 
likely soon to be found. There was a mo- 
ment of tense silence and then a single 
plucking sound which various eavesdrop- 
pers might have located at the surface of 
the ditch or near Linda's plump left 
cheek. Neither guess would have been 
wrong, for if she sighed once more it was 
not for the vanishing Lombard runes. 
Fraiilein Linda Goritz is, if something of a 
sentimentalist, also a bit of an analyst, and 
when, in the train, she learned that the 
spearhead was lost she accepted Haupt- 
mann's cheerful comment with a certain 



THE LOMBARD RUNES 71 

scepticism. He insisted with a suspicious 
vivacity that it didn't matter, that indeed 
he preferred to have the merely professional 
reminiscence eliminated from an experi- 
ence that had personally moved him so 
deeply. To this reading of the affair she 
naturally could not object, but as she gave 
him her hand quite formally for farewell, 
she said: "Tonight you have forgotten the 
runes, tomorrow you forget me, nicht 
wahr? You are wrong. Them you will not 
find again: there are many of me. You 
should have forgotten me first." She es- 
caped while a protest was on his lips. 

Since that evening Fraulein Goritz has 
followed Professor Hauptmann's brilliant 
career with a certain interest and per- 
plexity. He has ceased to be an Extra- 
ordinarius, but his promotion was based 
on his ingenious researches in Vandalic. 
After that trip to the Certosa he discon- 
tinued all Lombard studies, and, it is said, 
actually withdrew from publication a 
scathing article in which the West Ger- 
manic contingent were handled according 



72 THE LOMBARD RUNES 

to their deserts. She has a vague and 
not wholly comfortable feeling of having 
counted for something as a deterrent, and 
she has been heard to hint that his strange 
distaste for his favourite Lombard investi- 
gations, is due to a deep and intimate 
cause — an unfortunate affair of the heart 
associated with that historic region. 



THEIR CROSS 




OW their cross reached Fourth 
Avenue one may only surmise, 
but there surely was knavery 
at some point of its transit. It 
was too splendid in its enamelling, too 
subtle in the chiselling of its gilded silver 
to have slipped into the byways of the 
antiquary's trade with the consent of the 
Tuscan bishop who controlled or should 
have controlled its sale. For the matter of 
that, it still contained one of St. Lucy's 
knuckles, which in case of a regular trans- 
action would have been transferred to a 
less precious reliquary. No, there must have 
been a pilfering sacristan, or worse, a 
faithless priest, to explain its translation 
from the Chianti hills to Novelli's shop in 
Fourth Avenue. 

Once there it was certain that one day or 
another John Baxter must find it. How he 
became infected with the collector's greed 
and acquired the occult knowledge that 
73 



74 THEIR CROSS 

feeds that malady it would take too long 
to tell. Yet it may be said that the yearn- 
ing amateur was about the only potent 
ingredient in the mild composite that was 
John Baxter. His eyes, skin, hair, and rai- 
ment had never seemed of any particular 
colour, nor did he as a whole seem of any 
especial size. His parents, who were neither 
rich nor poor, cultured nor the contrary, 
had sent him to an indifferent school and 
college. In the latter he had joined a mid- 
dling chapter of a poorish fraternity, and 
was graduated with a rank that was neither 
high nor low. During those four easy going 
years he had played halfhearted baseball 
and football, and had all but made the 
"Literary Monthly." 

On entering the world, as the phrase goes, 
he came into possession of a small patri- 
mony and accepted a minor editorial posi- 
tion on a feeble religious monthly. For the 
ensuing fifteen years John Baxter overtly 
read manuscripts, composed headlines for 
edifying extracts, even wrote didactic little 
articles on his own account. Secretly, 
meanwhile, the lust of the eye was claim- 



THEIR CROSS 75 

ing him, and he was becoming surcharged 
with a single great passion. 
His ascent through books, prints, Colonial 
furniture, miniatures, rugs, and European 
porcelain to the dizzy heights of Chinese 
porcelain and Japanese pottery and paint- 
ing, it would be tedious and unprofitable 
to follow. It is enough to say that all along 
the course his dull grey eye emphati- 
cally proved itself the one thing not medi- 
ocre about him. It grasped the quality 
of a fine thing unerringly; it sensed a 
stray good porcelain from the back row of 
the auction room. How he knew without 
knowing why was a mystery to his fellows 
and even to himself. For if he frequented 
the museums of New York, and had made 
one memorable pilgrimage to the Oriental 
collections of Boston, he was quite without 
travel, and his education had been chiefly 
that of the shops and salesrooms. Thus his 
finds represented less knowledge than an ac- 
tive faith which served as well. A Gubbio 
lustre jug of museum rank had been bought 
before he knew the definition of majolica. 
Before he had learned the peril of such a 



76 THEIR CROSS 

hazard he had fearlessly rescued a real 
Kirman mat from an omnibus sale. His 
scraps of old Chinese bronze and stone- 
ware represented the promptings of a 
daemon who had yet to discover the differ- 
ence between Sung and Yungching. 
These achievements gave John Baxter a 
certain notoriety in his world and the un- 
usual luxury of self esteem. What brought 
him the scorn of blunter associates, who 
openly derided him as a crank, assured 
him a certain deference from the cognos- 
centi. The small dealers respected him as 
an authority; the auctioneers greeted him 
by name as he slipped into his chair, and 
appealed to him personally when a fine lot 
hung shamefully. He had the entree at 
two or three of the more discerning among 
the great dealers, who occasionally asked 
his opinion or gave him a bargain. In short 
a really impressive John as he sees himself 
was growing up within the skin of poor 
John Baxter, feeble scribbler for the weak- 
kneed religious press. As he looked about 
his cluttered room of an evening he could 
whisper proudly, "No, it's not a collection, 



THEIR CROSS 77 

but I can wait. And there is meanwhile 
nothing in this room that is not good, very 
good of its type." Sometimes in more ex- 
pansive musings he would take out of its 
brocaded bag a wooden tobacco box art- 
fully incrusted with lacquer, pewter, and 
mother of pearl, the work of the great 
Korin, and would declare aloud, "Nobody 
has anything better than this, no museum, 
certainly no mere millionaire." 
Such days and nights had fed an already 
inordinate craving. He burned for the 
beautiful things just beyond his grasp, 
suffered for them amid his morning moral- 
isings, dreamt of them at night. His was 
never the disinterested love of the beautiful 
that certain lucky collectors retain through 
all the sordidness of the quest. Had you 
observed John in the auction room you 
would have felt something concentratedly 
feline in his attitude and would hardly 
have been surprised had he pounced bodily 
upon a fine object as it passed near him 
down the aisle. No other ghost of the auc- 
tion rooms — and strange enthusiasts they 
are, had an eye that gleamed with so 



78 THEIR CROSS 

ominous a fire. There is peril in turning 
even a weak will into a narrow channel. 
It may exert amazing pressures — like the 
slender column of mere water that lifts a 
loaded car to, or with bad direction, 
through, the roof. 

Whether we should call John Baxter's 
courtship and marriage a digression or the 
culmination of his career as a collector 
might have remained doubtful were it not 
for the cross in Fourth Avenue. When he 
found it, hardly a week before he met 
Miriam Trent, he naturally did not take 
it for a touchstone. That it was in a man- 
ner such, may be inferred from the fact 
that the anxious morning before the wed- 
ding, he stopped at Novelli's for a last look, 
a ceremony strangely parodying the bache- 
lor supper of more ordinary bridegrooms. 
After a lingering survey of its deep trans- 
lucent enamels penned within crisply 
chiselled silver, like tiny lakes rimmed by 
ledges, he handed the cross back to the 
reverent Novelli. It had never looked more 
desirable, he barely heard Novelli's genial 



THEIR CROSS 79 

congratulation on the coming of the great 
day, as he wondered how so splendid a 
rarity had stayed in that little shop for 
two years. On reflection the reason was 
simple. The price, six hundred dollars, was 
a shade high for another dealer to pay, 
while the cross itself was so fine an object 
as merely to excite the distrust of Novelli's 
average customers. "Fools," muttered 
John, "how little they know," and hurried 
towards the florist's. As he made his way 
back towards an impressive frock-coat, his 
first, he found himself recalling with a cer- 
tain satisfaction that even if this were not 
his wedding day, he really never could have 
hoped to buy the cross. 
What Miriam Trent would have thought 
had she learned that her bridegroom waived 
all comparison between herself and the 
cross only because it was unattainable, one 
may hardly surmise. But as a sensible per- 
son who already knew John's foible and 
was accustomed to making allowances, she 
possibly would have been amused and just 
a bit relieved. She was everything that he 
was not. Where one passion absorbed him, 



8o THEIR CROSS 

she gave herself gladly to many interests 
and duties. A second mother to her numer- 
ous small brothers and sisters, and to her 
amiable inefficient father as well, she had 
somehow managed school and college for 
herself, and in accepting John and his 
worldly goods she gave up a decently paid 
library position. The insides of books were 
also familiar to her, in impersonal concerns 
she had a shrewd sense of people, in general 
she faced the world with a brave and deli- 
cate assurance. Finally she believed with 
fervour the creed and ethics that John hap- 
pened to inculcate every week, and it is to 
be feared that she took him for a prophet 
of righteousness. Armed at all points that 
did not involve her personal interests, 
there was she peculiarly vulnerable. She 
must have accepted John, aside from the 
glamour of his edifying articles, simply 
because of his evident and plaintively re- 
asserted need of her. 

Yet they were very happy together, as 
people who marry on this unequal basis 
often are. After their panoramic week at 
Niagara, along the St. Lawrence, and 



THEIR CROSS 81 

home by the two lakes and the Hudson, 
they settled down in John's room, which 
by the addition of two more had been pro- 
moted to being the living room of an 
apartment. Her few personal possessions 
made a timid, tolerated appearance be- 
tween his gilt Buddhas and pewter jugs. 
But she herself queened it easily over the 
bizarre possessions now become hers. Had 
you seen her of an evening, alert, fragile, 
golden under the lamp, and had you seen 
John's vague glance turn from a moongrey 
row of Korean bowls to her deeper eyes, 
you would have been convinced not merely 
that he regarded her as the finest object in 
his collection, but also that he was right. 
It would be intrusive to dwell upon the 
joys and sorrows of light housekeeping in 
New York on a small income. Enough to 
say that the joys preponderated in this 
case. They read much together, he gradu- 
ally cultivated an awkward acquaintance 
with her friends — he had practically none, 
and at times she made the rounds of the 
curiosity shops and auctions with him. 
Here, she explained, her part was that of 



82 THEIR CROSS 

discourager of enthusiasm, but repression 
was never practised in a more sympathetic 
and discerning spirit. Her taste became 
hardly inferior to his, and their barren 
quests together established a new com- 
radeship between them. It was probably, 
then, merely an accident that he never in- 
cluded Novelli's in these aimless rounds, 
and so never showed her the enamelled 
cross. 

In the long run their imaginary foraging, 
always a recreation to her, became a sore 
trial to him. With the demonstration that 
two really cannot live cheaper than one, 
the old covetousness smouldering for want 
of an outlet once more burned hotly 
within. It expressed itself outwardly in a 
general uneasiness and irritability. The 
little fund, her money and his, that lay in 
savings bank began to spend itself fan- 
tastically. One day he reckoned that two- 
thirds of the cross had been put by, and 
banished the disloyal thought with diffi- 
culty. Visionary plans of selling something 
and making the collection pay for itself 
were entertained, but when it came to the 



THEIR CROSS 83 

point nothing could be spared. Perhaps the 
gnawings of this hunger might have been 
controlled, had he thought to confide in 
Miriam. More likely yet, a system of rare 
and strictly limited indulgence might have 
banked the fires between times. However 
that be, the thwarted collector was to be 
sunk for a time in the devoted husband. 
Miriam lay ill of a wasting fever. 
After a two days' trial of the rooms, the 
doctor and the trained nurse, who scorn- 
fully slept amid the collection, regarding it 
as a permanent centre of infection, declared 
the situation impossible, and with the 
slightest preliminary consultation of be- 
wildered John, white-coated men were sent 
for, who carried Miriam to the hospital. 
About her door John hung like a miserable 
debarred ghost, for after the first few days 
her mind wandered painfully, and his 
presence excited her dangerously. For 
weeks he vacillated between perfunctory 
work at the office, unsatisfactory talks with 
busy doctors and impatient nurses, and 
long apprehensive hours in what had been 
home. In " Little Venice," in the best 



84 THEIR CROSS 

powder-blue jar and the rest, he found no 
solace, on the contrary the occasion of 
revolting suggestions. There was an imp 
that whispered that she must die and that 
he should resume collecting. With horror 
he fled the evil place, and spent an endless 
night on tolerance within hearing of her 
moanings. 

Fevers have this of merciful, that a term 
is set for them. Her malady though it often 
maims cruelly rarely kills. The temperature 
line on the chart, which for days had de- 
scribed a Himalaya, dwindled suddenly to 
a Sierra, as quickly to an Appalachian, and 
then became a level plain. Terribly wracked 
by the ordeal but safe they pronounced 
her. The visiting physician occasionally 
omitted her in his daily round. But con- 
valescence was more trying than the 
struggle with the fever. The lethargic 
hours seldom brought either sleep or rest. 
Beset by nervous fears, the collective suf- 
fering of the giant building weighed upon 
her, and she begged to be taken home. 
It was a pathetic triumphal entry that she 
made among their household gods. The 



THEIR CROSS 85 

sheer grotesqueness of her home struck her 
painfully for the first time, as she was 
helped to an ancient chair that stood be- 
fore the suspended Kirman rug — her throne 
John had always called it. As she once 
more occupied it, there came a curious re- 
vulsion against her gorgeously shabby 
domain. Other women, she reflected, had 
neat places, cool expanses of wallpaper, 
furniture seemly set apart. She resented 
the stuffiness of it all, the air of musty 
preciousness that pervaded the room. And 
when John took both her hands and said: 
"Now the collection is itself again; the 
queen has come home," she broke down 
and cried. She did much of that in the 
weeks that followed. You would have sup- 
posed her another person than plucky 
Miriam Baxter. But the situation hardly 
made for cheerfulness. Light housekeeping 
being no longer practicable, they depended 
on the unwilling ministrations of a slovenly 
maid. John, who, to do him justice, had 
never boasted much surplus vitality, felt 
vaguely that something was now due from 
him that he could not supply. To escape 



86 THEIR CROSS 

an inadequacy that was painful he drifted 
back to the exhibitions and sales, this time 
alone. He never bought anything, for he 
was saving manfully for a purpose that 
daily increased in his mind. He would pay 
with his pocketbook what with his person 
he could not. 

His always modest luncheon reduced itself 
to a sandwich, he walked to save carfares, 
cut off two Sunday newspapers, wore a 
threadbare spring overcoat into the win- 
ter. Then one day he took Miriam to a 
famous specialist from whom they learned 
very much what they already knew, but 
with the advantage of working orders. 
The great man told John in brief that it 
was a bad recovery which might readily 
become worse. A change and open air life 
were imperative; a sea voyage would be 
best. If such a change were not made, and 
soon, he would not be answerable for the 
consequences. 

All this John retold in softened form to 
Miriam in the waiting room. "We might 
as well give it up," she said resignedly. 
"Of course we can't travel. We haven't the 



THEIR CROSS 87 

money, and you can't get away." With the 
nearest approach to pride he had ever 
shown in a nonaesthetic matter John pro- 
tested that he could get away, and better 
yet that there was money, five hundred 
good dollars, more than enough for a 
glimpse at the Azores and Gibraltar, a 
hint of rocky Sardinia, a day at Naples, a 
quiet fortnight on the sunny Genoese 
Riviera, and then home again by the long 
sea route. His thin voice rose as he pictured 
the voyage. Even she caught something of 
his spirits, and as they got off the car near 
Novelli's, by a sudden inspiration John 
said, "Now for being a good girl, and 
doing what the doctor says, you shall 
see the most beautiful thing in New 
York." 

In a minute Novelli was carefully taking 
the precious thing from its drawer and 
solemnly unfolding the square of ruby 
velvet in which it lay. Miriam saw the 
rigid Christ, at the left Mary Mother in 
azure enamel, at the right the Beloved 
Apostle in Crimson. From the top God 
Father sent down the pearly dove through 



88 THEIR CROSS 

the blue. Below, a stately pelican offered 
its bleeding breast to the eager bills of its 
young. And it all glowed translucently 
within its sharp Gothic mouldings. Be- 
hind, the design was simpler — in enamelled 
discs the symbols of the evangelists. St. 
Lucy's knuckle lay visible under a crystal 
lens at the crossing, and surely relic of a 
saint was seldom encased more splendidly. 
Even pathetic Miriam kindled to it. "Yes, 
it is the most beautiful thing in New 
York," she admitted. "I suppose it costs 
a fortune, Mr. Novelli." "No, a mere noth- 
ing, for it, six hundred dollars." "Why, we 
might almost buy it," she cried. "It's 
lucky you haven't saved more, John. I 
really believe you would buy it." "I'd like 
to sell it to Mr. Baxter," said Novelli, "he 
understands it," only to be cut short with 
a brusque, "No, it's out of our class, but 
I wanted Mrs. Baxter to see it, and I 
wanted you to know that she appreciates 
a fine object as much as I do." "Evi- 
dently," said Novelli as they parted. "I 
hope she will do me the honour of coming 
in often; there are few who understand, 



THEIR CROSS 89 

and whether they buy or not I am always 
glad to have them in my place." 
About a week later John Baxter closed and 
locked his office desk, hurried down to 
the savings bank, and drew five hundred 
dollars. Most of it was to go into steamer 
tickets forthwith, a little balance was to be 
changed into Italian money. As he medi- 
tated a route downtown, he recalled the 
only adieu still left unpaid. To be sure the 
cross had remained for three years at No- 
velli's but it might go forever any day, and 
with it a great resource for a weary moral- 
ist. Farewells were plainly in order, and 
with no other thought he walked back to 
the shop and greeted Novelli, who without 
waiting to be asked produced the crimson 
parcel that contained the precious relic. 
As John looked it over from panel to panel, 
as if to stamp every composition upon his 
memory, Novelli watched him, reflected, 
hesitated, smiled benevolently, and spoke. 
"Mr. Baxter, I am in great need of money 
and must sacrifice the cross. I want you to 
take it. Vogelstein has offered me four 
hundred and fifty dollars for it but he 



9 o THEIR CROSS 

shall not have it if I can sell it to anybody 
who deserves it better and will value it. 
It is yours at that price. What do you 
say?" 

John tried for words that failed to come. 
"It's a bargain, Mr. Baxter," pursued 
Novelli, "but of course if you don't happen 
to have the money there's nothing more to 
say." 

"But I have it right here," retorted John 
in perplexity, "only it's for quite a differ- 
ent purpose." 

"You know your own business, of course, 
and I don't urge you, but if you have the 
money and don't take it, you make a great 
mistake. You know that well enough, and 
then remember how Mrs. Baxter admired 
it the other day." 
"Yes-s," faltered John dubiously. 
"Then why do you hesitate? You know 
what it is, and what it is worth, as an in- 
vestment, I mean. By taking your time 
and selling it right you can surely double 
your money." 
"But"— 
"No, there it is. I am honestly doing you a 



THEIR CROSS 91 

favour," and Novelli thrust the swathed 
cross into the hands of his fairly hypnotised 
customer. John's left hand clutched it in- 
stinctively, while with the frightened fin- 
gers of his right he counted off nine fifty 
dollar bills. 

"Thank you, Mr. Baxter, neither you nor 
your wife will ever regret it. Nobody in 
America has anything finer, and that you 
know." 

These words pounded terribly in John's 
brain as he found his way home, stumbled 
up stairs, and boggled with the latchkey. 
All the way down, unheeded passersby had 
wondered at the crimson burden (he had 
not waited for a parcel to be made) hugged 
closely to the shabby black cutaway. The 
danger signal smote Miriam in the eyes as 
she rose to be kissed. Standing away from 
her, he placed the shrouded cross on the 
table and tried for the confession that 
would not say itself. 

"Why, it's our cross," she cried wonder- 
ingly. "Mr. Novelli has lent it to us for a 
last look before we go where the lovely 
thing was made. But, John, what's the 



92 THEIR CROSS 

matter? How you do look! Has something 

awful happened?" 

"Yes," and the pale nondescript head sunk 

into his hands. " I have bought it. I don't 

know how. I had the money, I was there, 

and I bought it." 

She repressed the word that was on her 

lips, and the harder thought that was in 

her mind, looked long at his humiliation 

until the pity of a mother came over her 

tired face. She had mercifully escaped 

scorning him. Then she spoke. 

"It was a bad time to buy it, wasn't it, 

Dear, but it is a beautiful thing, almost 

worth a real trip to Italy." She added with 

a curious air of a suppliant, "And then 

perhaps we can sell it." 

"Yes, that's so, perhaps we can sell it," 

echoed John listlessly, wrapping the cross 

closely in its crimson cover and laying it in 

his most treasured lacquer box. "Yes, 

perhaps we can sell it," he repeated, and 

there was a long silence between them. 




THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

ENNIS, our Epicurean sage, 
addressed us all as we lolled 
on his terrace, drank his tea, 
and divided our attention be- 
tween his fluent wisdom and his spacious 
view of the Valdarno. 
"The question is," he repeated, "what 
will Emma do? Will she be brave, or, 
rather ordinary enough, to act for herself 
and him, or will she refuse him because of 
what she thinks we shall think of them 
both? As we calmly sit here she may be 
deciding. That is if you are sure, Harwood, 
that Crocker was really bound for Emma's 
when you saw him." 

"How could anybody mistake his beam- 
ing Emma face?" growled Harwood. "He 
was marching like a squad of Bersaglieri." 
"And she knows that Crocker wants it 
terribly?" added the Sage's wife. 
"She does, indeed," sighed Frau Stern 
repentantly, "for that demon (pointing to 
93 



94 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

Harwood) did tell me and I haf, babylike, 
told her." 

"Here is the case, then," resumed Dennis: 
"She knows we know Crocker wants her 
and it, but she doesn't know he doesn't 
know she has it." 

"Precisely, most clearly and gracefully 
put, my dear," laughed Mrs. Dennis. 
"And she knows, too," he pursued im- 
perturbably, "that we may think he wants 
her merely for it." 

"Bravo!" puffed Harwood smokily from 
his camp-stool. "She is too clever to expect 
any weak generosity from any of us. She 
believes we will think the worst. And won't 
we? Viva Nietzsche, and perish pity!" 
"Shame upon us, then," cried Frau Stern. 
"She will gif up that fine young man for 
fear of our talk? Never!" 
" She will send him away, dear Frau Stern, 
the moment he gives her the chance," de- 
clared Dennis. "What else can she do? 
She can never take the chance of our sur- 
mises. Behold us, the destroyers! The vic- 
tims are prepared." 
"Can't we do something about it?" Har- 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 95 

wood chuckled. "Repent? Be as harmless 
as doves? Let's write a roundrobin sol- 
emnly stating that, to the best of our 
knowledge and belief, he wants her for 
herself and not for it." 
"Gently," exclaimed Mrs. Dennis, as she 
blew out Harwood's poised and lighted 
match. "You surely don't imagine Crocker 
will propose the very day she shows it to 
him." 

"My dear," protested Dennis, "don't we 
all know him well enough to understand 
that any shock will produce that effect? If 
his mother died or his horse, his vines got 
the scale, his Ghirlandaio sprung a crack, 
his university gave him an honorary de- 
gree — these would all be reasons for pro- 
posing to Emma. Dear old Crocker is like 
that; any jolt would affect him that way." 
"Has it occurred to anybody that Emma 
may have foreseen just this complication 
and quietly got rid of it first?" suggested 
Mrs. Dennis, the really practical member 
of our group, adding, "That's how I'd 
have served you if I'd wanted him." 
"Never," responded Dennis. "She loves 



96 THE MISSrNG ST. MICHAEL 

it too well, and then she would feel we felt 
she had spirited it away on purpose." 
"Besides/' continued Harwood, whose 
buried aspirations Emmawards had long 
ago flowered into a minute analysis of her 
moods, "she is true blue, you know. She 
will never serve us like that. She may im- 
molate the mighty Crocker upon the altar 
of our collective curiosity, but she will 
never dodge us." 

"Cannot we all go back to our own coun- 
tries and leave them alone," suggested Frau 
Stern almost tearfully; "but no; we no 
longer haf countries. Here we belong; else- 
where the air is too strong for our little 
lungs. I pity us, and I pity more those poor 
young people. If only they will but haf the 
sense to trample on our talk." 
"That, too, would be a sensation," Den- 
nis added cheerfully, and we went our 
ways, as usual, without having reached 
anything so vulgar as a conclusion. 

Meanwhile Emma Verplanck stood in 
the loggia of her tiny villa and winced in 
the focus of the curiosities she despised. 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 97 

She scanned the white road that rimmed 
her valley before descending sharply to 
Florence beyond the hill, and especially the 
crescent of dust where an approaching fig- 
ure would first appear. Now and then, 
as if for a rest, her eye traced the line of 
flaming willows down toward the plunge 
of her brook into the larger valley, or the 
file of spectral poplars that led into the 
vineyards hanging on the declivity of 
Fiesole. Above all, the gaunt and gashed 
bulk of Monte Ceceri glistened hotly 
against a pale blue sky, for if it was a back- 
ward April, the first stirring of summer was 
already in the air. She thrilled with disgust 
as she asked herself why she dreaded this 
call. Why should she fear lest an element- 
ary test, a very simple explanation such 
as she planned for that afternoon, should 
compromise an established friendship? 
Interrupting this self-examination the 
mighty but unwieldy form of Morton 
Crocker loomed in the white dust crescent, 
and his premature panama swiftly followed 
the curve of the low grey wall towards her 
gate. As his steps were heard, her mind 



9 8 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

flew to the forbidding St. Michael on his 
gold background in her den and she could 
fairly hear Harwood saying to all of us, 
"Three to one on the Saint, who takes 
me?" The jangling of the bell recalled 
her to Crocker, and she braced herself in 
the full sunlight to receive him. For a 
moment, as he loomed in the archway, she 
indulged that especial pride which we re- 
serve for that which we might possess but 
austerely deny ourselves. 
Her mingled moods produced an unusual 
softness. Crocker felt it and wondered as 
she gave him her hand and had him sit for 
a prudent moment outside. All the hot 
way up the valley he had had a sense of 
a crisis. It was odd to be summoned 
whither he had been drifting for four years, 
and now the sight of Emma disarmed, per- 
plexed him. It seemed ominous. One finds 
such transparent kindness in clever peo- 
ple generally at parting, when one would 
be remembered for one's self and not for 
a phrase. Then Crocker for an instant 
glimpsed the wilder hope that the softening 
was for him and not for an occasion, Emma 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 99 

had never seemed more desirable than to- 
day. A white strand or two in her yellow 
hair, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her 
steady grey eyes, and the untimely thin- 
ness of her long white fingers made him 
eager to ward off the advancing years at 
her side, to keep unchanged, as it were, 
these precious evidences that she had 
lived. 

Some sense of his tenderness she must have 
had, for as she chatted gravely about his 
farming, about the lateness of the almond 
blossoms, about everything except people, 
who always tempted her sharp tongue, her 
manner became almost maternally solici- 
tous. "To-day you shall have your first 
tea in my den, Crocker" (so much she pre- 
sumed on her two years' seniority), she said 
at last, "and you are commanded to like 
my things." "What has thy servitor done 
to deserve this grace?" he managed to re- 
ply. "Nothing," she said, "graces never 
are for deserts. Or, rather, you poor fellow, 
you have been asked to tramp out here in 
this glare and really deserve to sit where it 
is cool." As they walked through the hall 



ioo THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

and the little drawing-room Crocker still 
felt uneasily that no road wkh Emma 
Verplanck could be quite as smooth as it 
seemed. 

The den deserved its name, being a tiny- 
brown room with a single arched window 
that looked askance at the cypresses and 
bell towers of Fiesole. Beside a couch, an 
Empire desk, and solid shelves of books, 
the den contained only a couple of chairs 
and the handful of things that Emma 
laughingly called her collection. As Crocker 
took in vaguely bits of Hispano-Moresque 
and mellow ivories, a broad medal or so 
and a well-poised Renaissance bronze, a 
Japanese painting on the lighted wall, and 
one or two drawings by great contempora- 
ries, Emma's friends, he was amazed at the 
quality of everything. A sense of extreme 
fastidiousness rebuked, in a way, his more 
indiscriminate zeal as a collector. Un- 
comfortably near him on the dark wall he 
began to be aware of something marvellous 
on old gold when tea interrupted his ob- 
servations. Tea with Emma was always 
engrossing. The mere practice and eti- 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 101 

quette of it brought the gentlewoman in 
her into a lovely salience. Her hands and 
eyes became magical, her talk light and 
constant without insistency. A symbolist 
might imagine eternal correspondence be- 
tween the amber brew and her sunny hair. 
It was easy to adore Emma at tea, and 
generally she did not resent a discreetly 
pronounced homage. But this afternoon 
she grew almost petulant with Crocker as 
they talked at random, and finally laughed 
out impatiently: "I really can't bear your 
ignoring my St. Michael, especially as you 
have never seen him before and may never 
see him again. St. Michael, Mr. Morton 
Crocker." 

"My respects," smiled Crocker, as he 
turned lazily toward the gilded panel. 
There was the warrior saint, his lines stiff, 
expressive and hieratic, his armour glisten- 
ing in grey-blue fastened with embossed 
gilded clasps; here and there gorgeous 
hints of a crimson doublet — the unmistak- 
able enamel, the grave and delicate tension 
of a masterpiece by the rare Venetian, 
Carlo Crivelli. Crocker gasped and started 



io2 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

from his seat, losing at once his cup^ his 
muffin, and his manners. "By Jove, Miss 
Verplanck, Emma, it's my missing St. 
Michael. Where did you ever find it? I 
must have it." His toasted muffin rolled 
unconsidered beside the spoon at his feet. 
Emma retrieved the cup — one of a precious 
six in old Meissen — he retained the saucer 
painfully gripped in both hands. 
"I was afraid it was," she answered, "but 
look well and be sure." 
"Of course we must be sure. You'll let 
me measure it, won't you? It's the only 
way." Assuming his permission he climbed 
awkwardly upon the chair, happily a stout 
Italian construction, and as she watched 
him with a strange pity, he read off from 
a pocket rule: "One metre thirty-seven. 
A shade taller than mine, but there is no 
frame. Thirty-one centimetres; the same 
thing. Yes, it is my missing St. Michael," 
and as he climbed down excitedly he hur- 
ried on: "How strange to find it here. I 
never talked to you about it, did I ? That's 
odd, too. I've been hunting for it for 
years. You didn't know, I suppose. I want 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 103 

it awfully. What can we do about it?" 
For Crocker, this fairly amounted to a 
speech, and before replying Emma gave 
him time to sit down, and thrust another 
cup of tea into his unwilling hands. Hav- 
ing thus occupied and calmed him, she said, 
"I'm very sorry, I hoped it would turn out 
to be something else. I only learned last 
week that you wanted it. You have seldom 
talked about your collecting to me. There's 
nothing to do about it. I wish there were. 
You want it so much. But I can't give it 
to you. That wouldn't do. And I won't 
sell it to you. I wouldn't to anybody, and 
then that wouldn't do, either. So there we 
are. Only think of their talk, and you'll see 
the situation is impossible." 
Crocker's eyes flashed. "There's a lot we 
might do about it if you will, Emma. 
Damn the St. Michael. If his case is so 
complicated, and I don't see it, leave him 
out of the reckoning between us. Can't 
you see what I need and want?" 
"They wouldn't see it, and I'm shame- 
fully afraid of them," she said simply, and 
then she added indignantly, "How could 



104 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

you dare, to-day? I can't trust you for any 
perception, can I?" 

Not perceiving that her scruple was be- 
lated, Crocker blurted out ruefully. "I'm 
an ass, and I'm sorry and I'm not. It's 
what I have wanted to say these many 
days, and perhaps it might as well be so. 
But I've wounded you and for that I'm 
more than sorry." 

"Let's not talk about it," Emma said 
gently. "Of course I'll forgive an old 
friend for saying a little more than he 
should. Only you must stop here. You'll 
forgive me, too, for owning your St. 
Michael. I'm honestly sorry it happened 
so. I would dismiss him if I could, for he is 
likely to cost me a good friend. But he 
creates a kind of impossibility between us, 
doesn't he, and for a while it's best you 
shouldn't come, not till things change with 
you. It's kindest so, isn't it, Crocker?" 
There was more debate to this effect be- 
fore the impassive St. Michael, until at last 
Crocker agreed impatiently, "You're right, 
Emma, or at least you have me at a dis- 
advantage, which comes to the same thing. 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 105 

And yet it's all wrong. You are putting 
a painted saint between yourself and a 
friend who wants to be more. It's logical, 
but it isn't human. As for their talk, 
they'll talk, anyhow, and we might as well 
stand it together. I'm probably off for a 
long time, Emma. I hope you'll find your 
St. Michael companionable. When you de- 
cide to throw him out of the window, let 
me know. Forgive me again. Good-by." 
She gave him her hand silently and fol- 
lowed him out into the loggia. As she 
watched him striding angrily down the 
valley and away, she had the air of a 
woman who would have cried if she were 
not Emma Verplanck. 

Crocker was right, we all did talk. And 
naturally, for had we not all been eagerly 
awaiting the collision announced by the 
cessation of his visits and the rumour that 
he was bound north. In council on Dennis's 
terrace, however, we came to no unanimous 
reading of the affair. Generally, we felt 
that even if Emma wanted a way out, 
which we guessed to be the fact, she would 



io6 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

never expose herself to our batteries, and 
with regret we opined that there was no 
way, had we wished, to divest ourselves of 
our collective formidableness. On all sides 
we divined a deadlock, with Dennis the 
only dissenting voice. He insisted scorn- 
fully that we none of us knew Emma, that 
we underestimated both her emotional 
capacity and her resourcefulness, and, 
finally, in a burst of rash clairvoyancy he 
declared that she would give away both 
the St. Michael and herself, but in her own 
time and manner, and with some odd per- 
sonal reservation that would content us all. 
We should see. 

Given the rare mixture of the conventional 
and instinctive that was Emma Verplanck, 
something of the sort did indeed seem 
probable. For ten years she had inhabited 
her nook, becoming as much of a fixture 
among us as the Campanile below. She 
came, like so many, for the cheapness and 
dignity of it primarily. Here her little 
patrimony meant independence, safety 
from perfunctory and uncongenial contacts 
at home, and more positively all those ap- 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 107 

purtenances of the gentlewoman that she 
required. But, unlike the merely thrifty 
Italianates, she never became blunted by 
our incessant tea giving and receiving. 
With familiarity, the ineffable sweetness of 
the country penetrated her with ever-new 
impressions. She loved the overlapping 
blue hills that stretched away endlessly 
from the rim of her valley, and the scarred 
crag that closed it from behind. She loved 
the climbing white roads, her chalky 
brook — sung as a river by the early poets — 
with its bordering poplars and willows and 
its processional display of violets, anemo- 
nes, primroses, blueflags, and roses. She 
loved even better that constant passing 
trickle of fine intelligences which feeds the 
Arno valley as her brook refreshed its 
vineyard. The best of these came gladly to 
her, for she was an open and a disillusioned 
spirit, with something of a man's down- 
rightness under her sensitive appreciation. 
Hers was the calm of a temperament fined 
but not dulled by conformity and experi- 
ence. Mrs. Dennis, whose sources of in- 
formation were excellent, said it was rather 



108 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

an unhappy girlish affair with an unworthy- 
cousin. Within the limits of the possible, 
the Verplancks always married cousins, 
and Emma, it was thought, had in her 
'teens paid sentimental homage to the 
family tradition. In any case she remained 
surprisingly youthful under her nearly 
forty years. Her capacity for intellectual 
adventure seemed only to increase as she 
passed from the first glow to proved im- 
pressions of books, art, persons, and the 
all-inclusive Tuscan nature. 
Her Stuyvesant Square aunts, who were 
authorities on self-sacrifice, agreed that the 
only sacrifice Emma had made in a thor- 
oughly selfish life was the purchase of the 
St. Michael. She had found it, on a visit 
in Romagna, in the hands of a noble family 
who knew its value and needed to sell it, 
but dreaded the vulgarity of a transaction 
through the antiquaries. To Emma, ac- 
cordingly, whom they assumed to be rich, 
they offered it at a price staggering for her, 
though still cheap for it. From the first she 
had adored it. There had been a swift ex- 
change of despatches with New York, and 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 109 

the St. Michael went home with her to 
Florence. After that adventure the small 
victoria, the stocky pony, and the solemn 
coachman had never reappeared. Emma 
walked to teas or, when she must, suffered 
the promiscuity of the trams. To those of 
us who knew the store she set by her 
equipage its exchange for the St. Michael 
indicated a fairly fanatical devotion. To 
her aunts it meant that she had spent her 
principal, which, in their eyes, was an ap- 
proximation to the mysterious "sin against 
the Holy Ghost." 

It was Dennis who speculated most auda- 
ciously, and perhaps truly, about the St. 
Michael. When he learned that Emma 
secreted it in her den, where she rarely ad- 
mitted anyone, he maintained that it had 
become her incorporeal spouse. The dainti- 
ness with which it fingered a golden sword- 
hilt, as if fearing contamination, symbolised 
the aloofness of her spirit. The solitary 
enjoyment of a great impression of art 
made her den a sanctuary, absolving her 
from commoner or shared pleasures. And 
in a manner the Saint was the type of the 



no THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

ultra-virginal quality she had - retained 
through much contact with books and life. 
For her to sell the St. Michael, Dennis felt, 
would be a sort of vending of her soul, to 
give it away in the present instance would 
imply, he insisted, an instinctive self- 
surrender of which he judged her in- 
capable. 

To Crocker's side of the affair we gave 
very little thought, considering that he, 
after all, had created the thrilling impor- 
tance of the St. Michael. But our general 
attitude toward the unwonted was one of 
indifference, and Crocker was too unlike 
us to permit his orbit to be calculated. The 
element of foible in him was almost null. 
None of our guesses ever stuck to him, and 
we had grown weary of rediscovering that 
anything so simple could also be so im- 
permeable to our ingenuity. In a word, 
Crocker's case was as much plainer than 
Emma's as noonday is than twilight. 
When one says that he was born in Boston 
and from birth dedicated to the Harvard 
nine, eleven, or crew — as it might befall; 
that he was graduated a candidate for the 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL m 

right clubs, that he took to stocks so natu- 
rally that he quickly and safely increased 
an ample inherited fortune, and this with- 
out neglecting horse, or rod, or gun; finally 
that he carried into maturity a fine boyish 
ease — when this has been said all has been 
told about Morton Crocker except the 
whimsical chance that made him an 
Italianate. 

Some reminiscence of his grand tour had 
beguiled a tedious convalescence and, fol- 
lowing the gleam for want of more serious 
occupation, he had set sail for Naples with 
a motor-car in the hold. At thirty-three he 
brought the keenness of a girl to the gal- 
leries, the towns, and the ineffable whole 
thing. It was Tuscany that completed his 
capture. He bought a villa and, as his 
strength came back, began to add new 
vineyards and orchards to his estate. But 
this was his play; his serious work became 
collecting and more particularly, as has 
been hinted, the quest of the missing St. 
Michael. When he learned, as a man of 
means soon must, that good pictures may 
still be bought in Italy, he promptly sue- 



ii2 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

cumbed to the covetousness of the col- 
lector, and the motor-car became preda- 
tory. Its tonneau had contained surrepti- 
tious Lottos and Carpaccios. Its gyrations 
became an object of interest to the Ministry 
of Public Instruction. Once on crossing the 
Alps it had been searched to the linings. 
While Crocker had his ups and downs as a 
collector, from the first his sense of reality 
stood him in stead. Being a Bostonian he 
naturally studied, but even before he at all 
knew why, he disregarded the pastiches 
and forgeries, and made unhesitatingly for 
the good panel in an array of rubbish. 
It was this sense for reality that impelled 
him to settle where the rest of us merely 
perched. Fifty contadim tilled his domain 
and actually began to earn out the costly 
improvements he had introduced. His wine 
and oil were sought by those who knew and 
were willing to pay. In the intervals of the 
major passion Crocker walked up and 
down the grassy roads superintending the 
larger operations. His muscular and hulk- 
ing blondness — he had rowed four years — 
towered above the dark little men who 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 113 

served, feared, and worshipped him. Un- 
like the rest of us who preferred to live in 
a delightful Cloud Cuckoo Town, which 
happened to be Florence also, he had 
chosen to take root in Tuscany. 
First he purged his castellated villa of the 
international abuses it had undergone for a 
century. It had hardly regained its fif- 
teenth century spaciousness and simplicity 
before it began to fill up again, but this 
time with pictures and fittings of the time. 
In all directions he bought with enthusi- 
asm, but his real vocation, after the cultiva- 
tion of Emma's society, soon came to be 
the completion of his great and growing 
altar-piece by Carlo Crivelli. What is 
usually a frigid exercise, a mere ascertain- 
ment that the parts of a scattered ancona 
are at London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Bos- 
ton, etc. — a patient compilation of meas- 
urements, documents and probabilities; 
what is generally a mere pretext for a solid 
article in a heavy journal — or at best a 
question of pasting photographs together 
in the order the artist intended — Crocker 
converted into an eager and most practical 



H4 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

pursuit. Bit by bit he gradually recon- 
stituted his Crivelli in its ancient glory of 
enamel on gold within its ornate mouldings. 
The quest prospered capitally until he 
stuck hopelessly at the missing St. Michael. 
As it stood for a couple of years complete 
except for the void where the St. Michael 
should be, the altar-piece represented less 
Crocker's abundant resources than his tire- 
less patience and energy. He had picked 
up the first fragment, a slender St. Cather- 
ine of 'Alexandria demurely leaning upon 
her spiked wheel, at a provincial anti- 
quary's in Romagna, not far from where 
the ancona had been impiously dismem- 
bered. Fortunately the original Gothic 
frame remained to give a clue to other 
panels. Next, word of a Crivelli Madonna 
with Donors at Christie's took him post- 
haste to London. Frame, period and meas- 
urements proved that it was the central 
panel, and the tiny donors, a husband and 
wife with a boy and girl, indicated that the 
wings had contained two female and two 
male saints. Between the St. Lucy (which 
turned up more than a year later in an un- 



THE MISSING ST, MICHAEL 115 

heard-of Swedish collection, and was had 
only by a hard exchange for a rare Lorenzo 
Monaco and a plausible Fra Angelico) and 
the sumptuous St. Augustine, which was 
brought to the villa in a barrow by a little 
dealer, there was a longer interval. Mean- 
while the frame had been reconstructed, 
and a niche for the missing saint rose in 
melancholy emptiness. A little before the 
sensational rencontre in Emma's den, the 
chance of finding a rude pilgrim woodcut 
on the Quai Voltaire revealed the saint's 
identity. This ugly print informed the 
faithful that the "prodigious image" of 
Our Lady existed in the Church of the Car- 
melites at Borgo San Liberale. One might 
distinguish at the extreme right of the five 
compartments a willowy St. Michael in 
armour, like Chaucer's Squire in a black- 
letter folio, or if the identification had been 
doubtful, there was the name below in all 
letters. 

When the print was shown to the schem- 
ing Harwood over the afternoon vermouth, 
he suspended a long discourse on the con- 
temptible fate of being born an Anglo- 



n6 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

Saxon, and it came over him with a 
blessed shock that Emma had the missing 
St. Michael. Penetrated by the joy of 
the situation, he hesitated for a moment 
whether to give the initiative to the man 
or the woman. A glance at Crocker's un- 
compromising sturdiness convinced him 
that on that side the situation might be 
quickly exhausted. Emma he could trust 
to do it full justice. Excusing himself 
abruptly, he made for Frau Stern's lodg- 
ings, and with the taste of Crocker's ver- 
mouth still in his faithless mouth, told her 
that Emma's Crivelli was no other than the 
missing St. Michael. To make matters sure 
he solemnly bound Frau Stern to secrecy. 
That accomplished, he strode whistling 
down through the purple twilight to his 
well-earned fritto at Paoli's. The next day 
began our wondering what Emma would do. 
She did, as is known, a thing that her 
simple Knickerbocker ancestresses would 
have approved — presented Crocker to the 
St. Michael and left the decision modestly 
to the men. Behind the frankness of her 
procedure lay, perhaps, a curiosity to see 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 117 

how Crocker would bear himself in a deli- 
cate emergency. It was to be in some 
fashion his ordeal. Thus she might at 
least shake the appalling equanimity with 
which he had passed from the stage of 
comrade to that of suppliant. Not that 
she doubted him; nobody did that, but she 
resented a little in retrospect his silence on 
the subject of the great quest. Was it pos- 
sible that for these five years he had 
chatted only about his college pranks, his 
fishing trips, his orchards and vineyards, 
and the views ? As she reviewed their count- 
less walks and teas, it really seemed as if he 
had never paid her the compliment of being 
impersonal. Well, that was ended now at 
any rate. A little misgiving filled her that 
she had never revealed the presence of the 
St. Michael to so good a play-fellow. A 
delicacy, knowing his incorrigible zeal as a 
collector, had restrained her, and then, as 
Dennis had guessed, her den was her 
sanctuary, admission to which implied an 
intimacy difficult to concede. Whatever 
the merits of the case, the rupture had pro- 
duced in a milieu consumed by the desire to 



n8 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

guess what Emma would do, at least one 
person who was solely interested in what 
Crocker's next move might be. For the 
first time in a singularly calculable life 
he had become an object of genuine cu- 
riosity. 

He acted with his usual simplicity. To 
Emma he wrote a brief note upbraiding 
her for fearing the voices of the valley, 
professing his eagerness to return when the 
St. Michael had been put out of the reckon- 
ing, and declaring that if it were not soon, 
he would willy-nilly come back and see 
how things were between them. It was a 
letter that wounded Emma, yet somehow 
warmed her, too, and from its reception 
we found her in an unwonted attitude of 
nonconformity to the verdicts of the valley. 
She began to speak up in behalf of this or 
that human specimen under our diminish- 
ing lenses with the unsubtle and discon- 
certing bluntness of Morton Crocker him- 
self. The phenomenon kept alive our 
waning interest during nearly a year of 
waiting. As for Crocker he gave it out 
ostentatiously that he was bound for a 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 119 

wonderful Cima in Northumbria and after- 
ward was to try dry-fly fishing on the 
Itchen. Beyond that he had no plans. All 
this was characteristically the truth; he 
bought the Cima, wrote of his baskets to 
Harwood, but stayed away past his melons, 
his grapes and his olives. By early winter 
we heard of him shooting the moose in 
New Brunswick, and later planning a 
system of art education in the Massachu- 
setts schools, and it was not till the brisk 
days of March that we learned the west 
wind was bringing him our way again. 
Meanwhile Emma had acquired a few more 
grey hairs and had resolutely declined to 
dispossess herself of the St. Michael. A 
couple of months after Crocker's leave- 
taking, a note had come to her from 
Crespi, the unfrocked priest and con- 
summate antiquarian, who, to the point 
of improvising a chef d^czuvre^ will furnish 
anything that this gilded age demands. 
Crespi most respectfully begged to repre- 
sent an urgent client, a Russian prince, 
who desired a fine Crivelli. Would the most 
gentle Miss Verplanck haply part with 



i2o THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

hers ? The price should be what she chose 
to name. It was no question of money, but 
of obliging a client whom Crespi could ill 
afford to disappoint. Emma curtly de- 
clined the offer. The St. Michael was valued 
for personal reasons and was not for sale. 
Six weeks later came a more insidious sug- 
gestion. The Director of the Uffizi, learn- 
ing that she possessed a masterpiece of a 
school sparsely represented in the first 
Italian gallery, pleading that such an ob- 
ject should not pass from Italy, and repre- 
senting a number of generous art-lovers 
who desired to add it to the collections 
under his care, made the following offer, 
trusting, however, not to any pecuniary 
inducement but to her loyalty as an 
honorary citizen of Florence. The price 
named was something less than the Lon- 
don value, but its acceptance would have 
perpetually endowed the victoria, and 

perhaps . If the malicious Harwood 

had not passed the word that the offer was 
a ruse of the wily Crocker, we all believed 
that she would have accepted. Indeed, we 
regretted her obduracy. It would have 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 121 

been such a capital way out, with no sacri- 
fice of her scruples nor waiver of our col- 
lective impressiveness. So Harwood came 
in for mild reprehension, the Sage Dennis 
remarking with some asperity that when 
the gods have provided us with farces, 
comedies, and tragedies in from one to five 
acts it is unseemly to string them out to 
six or seven. 

Early March, then, saw the deadlock un- 
broken. The St. Michael had not been 
dislodged. Emma still was unwavering so 
far as we knew. We were unable, had we 
willed, to divest ourselves of our deterrent 
attributes. But the situation had changed 
to this extent that Crocker was said to be 
on his way down to oversee a new system 
of spring tillage in person. 
Emma took his approach with something 
between terror and an unwonted resigna- 
tion. From the day when he had planted 
himself firmly beside her fireplace with a 
boyish wonder at finding himself so much 
at home, he had represented the incalcu- 
lable in her carefully planned life. Declin- 
ing to accept the attitude of other people 



i22 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

toward her, he had almost upset her atti- 
tude toward herself. He was the first man 
since the scapegrace cousin who had 
neither feared nor yet provoked her sharp 
tongue. While he relished her wit, it had 
always been with an unspoken deprecation 
of its cutting edge. He gave her a queer 
feeling of having allowances made for her — 
a condescension that in anybody but this 
big, likable boy she would have requited 
with sarcasm. But against him the cheveux 
de frise she successfully presented to the 
world seemed of no avail. He knew it was 
not timber but twigs, and that at worst one 
was scratched and not impaled. Day by 
day she watched the cropping of the long 
line of flaming willow plumes that escorted 
her brook toward the level. The line 
dwindled as the shorn pollards gave up 
their withes to bind the vines to the dwarf 
maples. She felt the miles between herself 
and Crocker lessening, and (at rare mo- 
ments) her scruples ready to be garnered 
for some sweet and ill-defined but surely 
serviceable use. But she would not have 
been Emma Verplanck if the manner of her 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 123 

not impossible surrender had not troubled 
her more than the act itself. Any lack of 
tact on the part of the husbandman might 
still spoil things. She had a whimsical 
sense that any one of the flaming wil- 
lows might refuse its contribution to the 
vineyard should the pruner approach with 
anything short of a persuasive "con per- 
messo" 

Crocker's "by your leave" was so far 
from persuasive that it left her with a 
panicky desire to run away — again a new 
sensation. He wrote: 

Dear Emma — 

We have had an endless year to think it over, and the 
only change on my side is that I need you more than ever. 
I will go away for real reasons, for your reasons, but for 
no others. If it is only their talk that separates us, their 
talk has had twelve good months and shall have no more. 
I must see you. May I come tomorrow at the old hour? 

As always yours, 
Morton Crocker. 

Something between wrath and dismay was 
the result of this challenge. She sat down 
to answer him according to his impudence, 
and the words would not come. The great- 
ness of the required sacrifice came over her 



124 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

and therewith the desire to temporise. The 
voice of many Knickerbocker ancestresses 
spoke in her, and between herself and a real 
emergency she interposed the impenetrable 
buckler of a conventionality. She wrote: 

Pension Schalck, Bad Weisstein, 

Austrian Tyrol. 
My Dear Crocker — 

It would be pleasant to see you and talk over your trip, 
but you see by this address it is for the present impossible. 
As always, 

Cordially yours, 

Emma Verplanck. 

When Crocker found Emma's valley as 
effectually barred as if a battery guarded 
the approaches, he gave way to a deep re- 
sentment. Instinctively hating anything 
like a trick, to be tricked by Emma at this 
point was intolerable. His gloom was such 
that he confided to the malicious Harwood 
a profound disgust with the irreality of the 
life Italianate. The podere should be sold 
as soon as it could be put in order. Such 
pictures as the Italian Government cov- 
eted, it should keep, the rest should go to 
the Museum at Boston. He himself would 
grow orange trees in North Cuba where 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 125 

there were things to shoot and, thank 
heaven, no civilisation. Harwood came 
breathlessly to Dennis's with the tale, 
gloating openly that there was to be a 
seventh act if not an eighth. 
A long hard day with his bailiff and the 
peasants restored Crocker's poise. He 
looked for the hundredth time over into 
Emma's valley and divined her attitude. 
Dreading an interview, she had left the 
way open to parley. She virtually pleaded 
for a delay. It was a new and, in a way, de- 
lightful sensation to be feared. For the 
first time in any human relation he ex- 
ploited a personal advantage and wrote, 
addressing Bad Weisstein: 

Dearest Emma — 

You have wanted a delay. Well, you have it — probably a 
week already. Make the most of it, for two weeks from 
this date — I give you time to recover from your journey — 
I am coming for tea in the old way. Meanwhile you can 
hardly imagine the impatience of 

Yours more than ever, 

Morton Crocker. 

Whether Crocker or Emma was more 
miserable during the fortnight even Dennis 
could not have told. But there was in his 



126 THE MISSING ST, MICHAEL 

woe something of the sublime stolidity of 
the man who is going to stand up to be shot 
or reprieved, whereas she suffered the un- 
certainty of the soldier who has been 
drawn to make up the " firing party" for a 
comrade. She feared that she would not 
have courage enough to despatch him, and 
then she feared she would. Meantime the 
days passed, and she woke up one morning 
with an odd little shiver reminding her that 
it was no longer possible to get a note to 
him by way of Bad Weisstein. Nor had she 
the heart to move to a nearer coign of con- 
structive absence. Of half measures she 
was, after all, a foe. Her determination to 
send Crocker away daily increased, and the 
implacable St. Michael seemed to com- 
mand that course. "You are not for him. 
You represent a whole artificial world in 
which he cannot breathe. I, the finest in- 
carnation of the most exquisite mannerism 
of a bygone time, am your spiritual spouse, 
and you may not lightly renounce me. You 
have devoted yourself to graceful irrealities 
and must now abide by your choice." Thus 
the St. Michael had spoken in a dream in 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 127 

the troubled hours before daybreak, and 
when Emma went to her den late the next 
morning she confronted him and admitted, 
"You are right, St. Michael. It's all true." 
That afternoon Crocker was coming for 
tea, and if her New York aunts could have 
known, even they would have granted that, 
for the second time in a thoroughly selfish 
life, Emma was displaying capacities for 
self-sacrifice. 

As Emma and Crocker shook hands that 
afternoon, one might see that both had 
aged a little, but he most. Something of the 
appealing boyishness had gone out of his 
eyes. He had become her contemporary. 
A certain moral advantage, too, had passed 
to his side and she, whose prerogative it 
had been to take the leading part, now 
waited for him to begin. As if on honour 
to do nothing abruptly, he sketched his 
year for her — his sports and committees, 
his kinsfolk and hers; their fresh, invig- 
orating, half-made land. She listened al- 
most in silence until he turned to her and 
said: 
"With me, Emma, it is and always will 



128 THE MISSING ST, MICHAEL 

be the same. You know that. Has any- 
thing changed with you?" 
"I don't think so, Crocker. How can I 
tell? I'm glad you're here, in spite of the 
shabby trick I've played you. Let me say 
just that I'm heartily glad to see an old 
friend." 

"No, I must have more than that or less. 
I want much more than that." 
"You want too much. You want more 
than I can give to anybody. O! Why can't 
you see it all? You are alive, even here in 
Florence but, I, I am no longer a real per- 
son that can love or be loved. Can't you 
see that I am only a sensibility that ab- 
sorbs the sweetness of this valley, a mere 
bundle of scruples and fears, a weather- 
cock veering with the talk of the rest of 
them? Think of that and take back what 
you have thought about me." 
"Emma, you admit a need, and that is 
very sweet to me. You want some one to 
strengthen you against all this that you 
call the valley. Mightn't that helper be I?" 
"You shan't be committed to anything so 
hopeless." 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 129 

"It isn't as hopeless as it seems. The 
strength of the valley is only in its weak- 
ness, and we shall be strong together." 
"I have forgotten how to be strong, for 
years I have only been clever." 
"You'd be dull enough with me as you 
well know. I can do that for both. But 
don't talk as if there were some fate be- 
tween us. There can be none except your 
indifference, and I believe you do care a 
little and will more." 

"Of course, I care, Crocker, but not as you 
wish. You have refreshed me in this 
opiate air. You have represented the real 
country I have exchanged for this illusion, 
the real life I might have lived had I been 
braver or more fortunate. But you can 
have no part in what I have come to be. 
Go, for both our sakes." 
"Not for any such reason. I can't sur- 
render my happiness for a phrase; I can't 
leave you to these delusions about your- 
self." 

"It is no delusion; I wish it were. It's in 
my blood and breeding. For generations 
my people have lived the unreal life. I am 



i 3 o THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

the fine flower of my race, and in coming 
to this valley of dreams and this no-life I 
am merely fulfilling a destiny — a fate, as 
you say — and coming to my own." 
"But Emma, the worthy Verplancks?" 

"No, listen to me. For generations the 
Verplancks have been what people ex- 
pected them to be, incarnate formulas of 
etiquette and timid living. They took 
their colour from the gossiping society in 
which they seemed to live. They pru- 
dently married other Verplancks, cousins 
or cousins' cousins. They hoarded their 
little fortunes without increasing them, 
and if what they called the rabble had not 
peopled New York and raised the price of 
land, which my people were merely too 
stolid to sell, we should long ago have gone 
under in penury. We have led nobody and 
made nothing, but have been maintained by 
stronger forces and persons, toward whom 
we have always taken the air of doing 
a favour. That mistake at least I shall not 
make with you, Crocker. I want you to 
feel the full nullity of me. As I see you now 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 131 

I have a twinge because my great grand- 
father, who was a small banker, would 
have called yours, who was a farmer — you 
see I have looked you up — not ' Mister' 
but 'My Good Man.' " 
For a moment she paused, and Crocker 
groped for a reply, "All this may be true, 
Emma," he said at last, "and yet mean 
very little to you and me. Besides, I'm 
quite willing you should call me your Good 
Man. In fact, I'd rather like it." 
"You must take me seriously — you shall. 
I cannot marry. I'm married already. 
Dennis says I am. Come and see my 
bridegroom." And she fairly dragged the 
bewildered Crocker into her den and set 
him once more before the missing St. 
Michael. 

"There he is, an incarnated weakness and 
fastidiousness. His hand is too delicate to 
draw his own sword. If he really cast out 
Satan, it must have been by merely star- 
ing him down. His helmet rests with no 
weight upon his curled and perfumed 
locks — his buckles are soft gold where iron 
should be. He represents the dull, collect- 



132 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

ive, aristocratic intolerance of Heaven for 
the only individualist it ever managed to 
produce. He pretends to be a warrior and 
is as feminine as your St. Catherine. He is 
the imperturbable champion of celestial 
good form, and Dennis, who sees through 
things, says he is my spiritual husband. He 
is the weakest of the weak and is too strong 
for you, Crocker." 

For a space that seemed minutes they 
faced each other, Emma excited, with a 
diffused indignation that defied impartially 
the missing St. Michael and the puzzled 
man before her; Crocker with a perplexity 
that renewed the old boyish expression in 
his eyes. He seemed to be thinking, and, as 
he thought, the tension of Emma's attitude 
relaxed, she forgot to look at the St. 
Michael and wondered at the even, steady 
patience of the big likable boy she was 
dismissing. She pitied him in advance for 
the futile argument he must be revolving. 
She had despatched him as in duty bound 
and was both sorry and glad. 
But his counterplea when it came was of 
a disconcerting briefness and potency. He 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 133 

said very slowly, "Yes, I see it all. There 
is your spiritual husband; there are they" 
(indicating the valley with a sweep of a 
big hand), "and there are you, Emma, 
caught in a web of baffling and false ideas; 
and here am I, a real man who loves you, 
fearing neither the St. Michael nor them" 
(another gesture) "nor your doubts. I 
set myself, Morton Crocker, your lover, 
against them all and take my own so." 
There was a frightened second in which 
his sturdy arms closed about her. There 
was a little shudder, as the same big hand 
that had defied the valley sought her head 
and pressed it to his shoulder. When Em- 
ma at last looked up the mockery she 
always carried in her eyes had given place 
to a new serenity, and her hand reached 
up timidly for his. 

Crocker and Emma — we now instinc- 
tively gave him the precedence — were in- 
considerate enough to remove themselves 
without making clear the fate of the no 
longer missing St. Michael. We still spec- 
ulated indolently as to the nature of the 



134 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

afterpiece in which we assumed this ex- 
hero of our comedy might yet appear. 
Then we learned that Emma was to be 
married without delay from the stone 
manor house under the Taconics where 
her people had dwelt since patroon days. 
Only a handful of friends with Crocker's 
nearest kin and her inevitable New York 
aunts were to be present. These venerable 
ladies had admitted that in marrying, even 
opulently, out of the family, Emma had 
once more shown velleities of self-sacrifice. 
Then we heard of Crocker and Emma on 
his boat along the coast "Down East." 
Later we were shocked by rumours of a 
canoe trip through Canadian waterways. 
Hereupon the usually benevolent Dennis 
protested as he glanced approvingly at the 
well-kept Tuscan landscape. "Crocker 
needn't rub it in," he opined. "Why, it's 
the same scrubby spruce tree from the 
Plains of Abraham to James's Bay — and 
Emma, who hated being bored! Why, it's 
marriage by capture; it's barbaric." "It's 
worse; it's rheumatic," shuddered Har- 
wood as he declined Marsala and took 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 135 

whisky. "But he'll have to bring her back 
to civilisation some time, if only to hospi- 
tal. We shall have her again," "He will 
bring her back, but we shall never have 
her again," said Dennis solemnly. "She 
has renounced us and all our works." 
"Renouncing our works isn't so difficult," 
smiled Mrs. Dennis, and then the talk 
drifted elsewhere, to new Emmas who 
were just beginning to eat the Tuscan 
lotus. 

Before the year had turned to June again we 
had nearly forgotten our runaways, when 
a quite unusual activity about her villa 
and Crocker's warned us that they were 
coming back. Harwood had seen in transit 
a box which he thought corresponded 
to the St. Michael's stature, but was not 
sure. In a few days came a circular note 
from Crocker through Dennis saying that 
they were fairly settled and he glad to see 
any or all of us. She, however, was still 
fatigued by the journey and must for a 
time keep her room. 

Harwood straightway volunteered to un- 
dertake the preliminary reconnaissance, 



136 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

while Frau Stern engaged to penetrate to 
Emma herself. 

On a beatific afternoon we sat in council 
on Dennis's terrace awaiting the envoys. 
Below, the misty plain rose on and on till 
it gathered into an amber surge in Monte 
Morello and rippled away again through 
the Fiesolan hills. Nearer, torrid bell- 
towers pierced the shimmering reek, like 
stakes in a sweltering lagoon. In the centre 
of all, the great dome swam lightly, a 
gigantic celestial buoy in a vaporous sea. 
The spell that bound us all was doubly 
potent that day. The sense of a continuous 
life that had made the dome and the bel- 
fries an inevitable emanation from the 
clean crumbling earth, lulled us all, and 
we hardly stirred when Harwood bustled 
in, saying, "Cheer up. I have seen Crocker, 
and it isn't there." "You mean," said the 
cautious Dennis, "that Crocker still pos- 
sesses only the hole, aperture, frame, or 
niche that the missing St. Michael may yet 
adorn." "I only know that it isn't there 
now," growled Harwood. "I deal merely 
in facts, but you may get theories, if you 



THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 137 

must have them, from Frau Stern, who 
heroically forced her way to Emma over 
Crocker's prostrate form." 
As he spoke we heard Frau Stern's timid, 
well-meaning ring, and in a moment her 
smile filled the archway. 
" We don't need to ask if you have news," 
cried Mrs. Dennis from afar. 
"If I haf news. Guess what it is. It is too 
lovely. You cannot think? Well, there will 
be a baby next autumn, what you call it?" 
"Michaelmas, I suppose," grunted Har- 
wood through his pipe-smoke and sub- 
sided into indifference. 
"All this is most charming and interest- 
ing, Frau Stern," expostulated Dennis, 
"but, as our enthusiastic friend Harwood 
delicately hints, what we really let you go 
for was to locate the Missing St. Michael." 
"I haf almost forgot that," she apologised 
as she nibbled her brioche, "Emma was so 
happy. But for the bothersome St. Mi- 
chael there is no change. I saw it in what 
she calls her new den. She laughed to me 
and said, 'I cannot let him have it, you see, 
you would all say he married me for it.' " 



138 THE MISSING ST. MICHAEL 

"Bravo!" shouted Dennis and Harwood 
in unison, and the Sage added with unc- 
tion, "So she has not been able to renounce 
us utterly." 

"It is not now for long," rejoined Frau 
Stern, "it is only to the time we haf said." 
"Michaelmas," repeated Harwood dis- 
gustedly. 

"Yes, that is it," she pursued tranquilly, 
"Emma told me in confidence, 'To Crocker 
I cannot give it because of you all, but to 
our child I may, and it shall do with it 
what it will.' Now do you prevail, Misters 
Dennis and Harwood?" 
"We are a bit downcast but not discom- 
fited," acknowledged Dennis, while Har- 
wood remained glumly within his smoke. 
"Emma has escaped us, but she still pays 
us the tribute of a subterfuge. It is enough, 
we will forgive her, even if her way lies 
from us dozers here. For to-day the same 
sunshine drenches her and us. It is a bond. 
Let us enjoy it while we may." 




THE LUSTRED POTS 

|AUL away, Sam. This is the real 
thing" came from the depths 
of the well. Sam Cleghorn 
stumbled in the gloom towards 
the windlass, avoiding on the way a rude 
handpump and two heaps of dirt and 
broken pottery that sloped threateningly 
upon the low curb, where balanced a per- 
forated disc of marble, the great bottom- 
stone of the well. All these properties 
caught a little light from a beam that came 
through a slit in the wall, casting most of 
its uncertain bloom up into a low groined 
vault, the heavy round arches of which 
were separated from squat piers by clumsy 
brackets. Outside at the level of the retic- 
ulated stone floor one could hear the rush- 
ing of a river. As Cleghorn leaned over the 
well-mouth before seizing the crank, a 
glimmer of yellow light flooded his face 
and again came up the hollow impatient 
cry, "Haul away, Sam. This lot's a good 
139 



i 4 o THE LUSTRED POTS 

one, and it's mine." Replying "All right, 
Dick," Cleghorn bent to the crank. With 
much creaking the coils crept along the 
spindle and the light burden began to rise 
jerkily. 

Although neither the well nor the vaulted 
cellar chamber belonged to Sam Cleghorn 
or to Dick Webb, their presence and ac- 
tions there were not surreptitious. Stanton 
Mayhew, who ignorantly owned the well, 
had given them plenary permission to 
pump and dig, mildly pitying their ap- 
parent lunacy. The palace above was his 
in virtue of his sensible preference for liv- 
ing twice as well on the Arno for half the 
cost on the Hudson. This rule of two, like 
so many foreign residents of Florence, he 
unquestioningly obeyed, and it constituted 
practically the whole of his philosophy and 
maxims. Hence he was not the man to 
prize a Tuscan well dug in the fourteenth 
century, cleaned perhaps never, and gradu- 
ally filled to the brim with what the for- 
wardlooking past benightedly took for rub- 
bish. So when Cleghorn and Webb made 



THE LUSTRED POTS 141 

him an overture for the right to clean the 
well, he had genially replied, "Why, go 
ahead, boys, and enjoy yourselves. It's you 
who ought to be paid, but for your healths' 
sake you really ought to wait till I've 
punched some decent windows through 
that damp cellar wall and let the air in." 
If neither Sam nor Dick waited even a day, 
it was because each was a bit afraid that 
the other would begin alone. College mates, 
collectors both, they were fast friends in a 
way and rivals beyond dispute. Their 
common taste for antiquity and adequacy 
of means had made their graduate course 
chiefly one of travel. And when travel wore 
out its novelty they naturally settled in 
the easiest, as the least exacting, European 
city, occupying two halves of one floor in 
the same palace. Their apartments started 
full, and quickly overflowed with objects 
of curiosity and art — all old, for their 
knowledge was considerable; some fine, for 
neither was without taste. But taste 
neither had in any austere sense, for they 
collected art much as a dredge collects 
marine specimens. Nothing came amiss to 



i 4 2 THE LUSTRED POTS 

them. Wood, ivory, silver, bronze, marble, 
plaster — they repudiated no material or 
period. Stuffs, glass, pictures, porcelains, 
potteries — it was all one to them so the 
object were old and rare. Inevitably, then, 
they had come to primitive pots, and sim- 
ultaneously, for they not only watched 
each other closely, but almost read each 
other's minds. And when they came to 
primitive pots it was certain that they 
would beg, borrow, or steal a well, since in 
old wells, and cisterns, besides less men- 
tionable places, primitive pots abide. 
Many pots were there, as we shall see, 
from the first, and the maids and children 
of the centuries, by way of concealing 
breakages, have usually made notable 
secondary contributions. So when amiable 
Stanton Mayhew freely conceded a most 
ancient well to Cleghorn and Webb, it was 
like receiving Pandora's box, with the dif- 
ference that the well might safely be 
opened. 

Here had ensued a most delicate negotia- 
tion concerning the division of the spoil. 
A mathematical partition of the frag- 



THE LUSTRED POTS 143 

mentary material that an old Italian well 
contains is extremely difficult if at all 
possible. After much debate it was agreed 
that after they struck pay dirt, each 
should dig in turn, each to have the 
bucketful that came under his trowel or 
fingers. Scattered fragments of the same 
pot and other complications were to be 
adjudicated by Mayhew, whose ignorance 
and disinterestedness were safe to assume. 
But the well gave up quantities of non- 
contentious matter before Mayhew's serv- 
ices were required. The first five feet had 
revealed nothing but fragments of kitchen 
pottery of our time and a fairly perfect 
hoopskirt of Garibaldian date. A little 
lower had emerged the skeleton of a cat. 
Similar tragedies were in evidence, on an 
average, at every quarter century of 
depth. Between the second and third cat, 
lay Ginori imitations of Sevres and Wedge- 
wood, scraps too of gilded glass — the 
earnest of better things below. Five cats 
down, some eighteenth-century apothecary 
pots, damaged but amenable to repair, 
had inaugurated the alternation of buckets 



144 THE LUSTRED POTS 

under the agreement. It were tedious to fol- 
low the ascending scale of excellence as the 
digging went deeper. Enough to say that 
below the mixed ingredients and the nether- 
most cat they found a homogeneous layer 
of beautiful fourteenth-century shards, af- 
fording many buckets full, and promising 
delicate adjudication to the referee. 
Before the lustred pots themselves shed a 
baleful gleam over this narrative, some- 
thing should obviously be said about 
Italian wells and why they contain pots. 
Beyond those casually acquired from care- 
less or secretive servants, there is, if the 
well be old and of good make, a certain 
number of intact pieces put in to serve as 
a filter. Often a group of pitchers or simi- 
lar crocks is imprisoned between the two 
bottom-stones. Sometimes there are two 
such layers. After this filter had been 
made there was frequently scattered a 
bushel or more of small shards above. 
From these by careful sorting complete or 
nearly complete pieces may be recovered. 
Through all this mass of whole or broken 
pottery the water had to find its way up, 



THE LUSTRED POTS 145 

for the cement sides of an Italian well are 
watertight. Thus, barring the indiscretions 
of housemaids and cats, the early Italians 
drank pure water. 

Naturally Cleghorn and Webb were con- 
versant with these refinements of mediaeval 
hydraulics. In fact when Webb, the 
sturdier of the two, hauled up the bottom- 
stone all dripping, Cleghorn promptly de- 
clared that in the sense of the contract it 
was a bucketful; hence his first go at the 
now uncovered pots. So heated grew the 
debate, that finally the grimy excavators 
climbed to the upper air and appealed to 
Mayhew, who promptly denied the quib- 
ble, deciding that stones and pots were not 
interchangeable. The diversion drew at- 
tention from the great perforated disc 
itself, and as the sullen Cleghorn let the 
exultant Webb down upon the ancient 
pots, it lay badly bestowed near the curb 
on the crumbling slope of a rubbish heap. 
And now Cleghorn with bitterness of heart 
was reeling up Webb's find. As the coils 
broadened on the windlass a small iron 
bucket rose above the parapet, brimming 



146 THE LUSTRED POTS 

with something that glinted metallically 
under the dirt. Beside the bucket flapped 
the rude swing in which the entrances and 
exits of the partners were made. As Cleg- 
horn grasped the bail and swung the 
precious cargo clear of the well, came up 
once more the voice of Webb: "Hustle, 
Old Man, I'm keen to see them, they feel 
good." 

Good they were indeed. Cleghorn, who for 
fifteen years had haunted shops and mu- 
seums had never seen the like in equal 
compass. As he took them cautiously one 
by one and held them high in the uncer- 
tain light, each revealed a desirable point. 
Here was a coat of arms, a date, the initial 
of an owner. There were grotesque birds 
and beasts. Differing in form and colour, 
the entire lot agreed in possessing that dull 
early Italian lustre, which perhaps acci- 
dental and less distinguished than that of 
Spain, is even dearer in a collector's eyes. 
They hinted of all enamelled things that 
come out of the East — of the peacock re- 
flections of the tiles of Damascus and 
Cordova, of the franker polychromy of 



THE LUSTRED POTS 147 

Rhodian kilns, of the subtler bloom of the 
dishes of Moorish Spain, of the brassier 
glazes of Minorca and Sicily — all these 
things lay enticingly in epitome in these 
lustred Italian pots, as they glimmered 
with a furtive splendour. Yes, they were a 
good lot, thought Cleghorn as he placed 
them reverently on the flagging. It was the 
find of a lifetime. A man with nothing else 
in his cupboard must be mentioned re- 
spectfully among collectors from Dan to 
Beersheba. 

Again the impatient voice of Webb below: 
"Hurry up, I say. It's getting cold: the 
water is gaining." 

"All right," called Cleghorn, giving a few 
strokes of the pump, but never taking his 
eyes from the lustred pots. Then as if by a 
sudden inspiration he asked, "Any more 
in that lot, Dick?" 

"Not a one," cried Webb jubilantly, 
"there was just a bucketful and a squeeze 
at that. But there may be others beneath. 
There's another bottom-stone, and it's 
your next turn. But why don't you hurry 
up?" 



i 4 8 THE LUSTRED POTS 

A scowl passed over Cleghorn's thin face 
set unswervingly towards the pots. They 
glimmered in the shadow with an unholy 
phosphorescence — green, blue, carmine, 
strange purplish browns. So the glittering 
coils of the serpent may have bewildered 
our first Mother. There were other pots 
below, reflected Cleghorn, yes, but there 
never could be again such a batch as these. 
And then his dazed eye for a second left 
the fascinating pots, and mechanically 
searched the vaulted chamber. To his ex- 
cited gaze the rubbish heaps centring about 
the curb seemed already in movement. 
The massive bottom-stone overhung the 
parapet, resting only on loose dirt and 
shards. With horror he noted that a breath 
might send it down. If it slipped, whose 
were the lustred pots ? Against his will the 
phrase said itself over and over again 
throbbingly behind his eyes, and again he 
forgot everything in the vision of the 
lustred pots. 

"Damn it, hurry up," came thunderously 
from below. Cleghorn stumbled with a 
curious hesitation between the crank and 



THE LUSTRED POTS 149 

the poised bottom-stone, The clumsy 
movement loosened a handfuL of shards 
which went clattering down; the great 
stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung 
once more in uncertain oscillation. Pro- 
fanity unrestrained transpired from the 
mouth of the well. 

It was a tremulous Cleghorn that sent 
down the bucket and reeled up an irate and 
vociferous Webb. Words abounded without 
explanations, and blows seemed possible, 
when Cleghorn, as it were apologetically 
raised a pitcher and a bowl into the shaft 
of light that came through the oubliette. 
"They're all like that, Dick," he protested. 
"It's your lucky day. I congratulate you." 
It was a silenced and mollified Webb that 
clutched at the pots, and noted wisely that 
every one had been brushed by the pea- 
cock's tail. With a kind of pity at last he 
turned to the deprecating Cleghorn and 
said, "That was an awkward business of 
yours about the shards, and the bottom- 
stone there is a pretty sight for a man who 
left it so and went down to work under it, 
but one couldn't wait for such pots as 



iSo THE LUSTRED POTS 

these. On my soul, Old Man, if you had 

dumped it all down on me I could hardly 

have blamed you." 

Welcomed with a loud laugh by its maker, 

the joke jarred on Cleghorn, who merely 

answered, "It's very good of you, Dick, 

to say so." 

"But there may be quite as good ones 

below," pursued Webb genially. "We'll 

rest up a bit and then you have your go 

and finish the job." 

"If you don't mind, Dick, I'd rather not," 

was the embarrassed answer. "The fact is 

I'm too nervous and absentminded for 

this work." He looked down into the 

blackness with a shudder and said. "No, I 

don't want to go down there again. One 

can't tell what might happen there." 

"Then you've dropped your nerve. Sorry 

for it," came from a baffled and disgusted 

partner, but as he spoke a smile drew 

across the broad, amiable face, and he 

added insinuatingly, "Then the rest are 

mine, Old Mar,?" 

"Yes they're yours fast enough." 

"It's mighty good of you, Sam. I won't 



THE LUSTRED POTS 151 

forget it. I'll share sometime on a good 
thing like this. Fm all ready to go down 
again when you've had a smoke. Only 
we'll set that stone right and you'll be 
more careful about the shards." 
"If you'll excuse me, Dick, I'd rather not." 
Cleghorn looked at his watch. "You see I 
ought to be out of these duds already. I 
have a very particular tea outside. Didn't 
I tell you about it? I'll send Mayhew down 
to help." 

"All right, just as you please," was the 
indifferent reply. But as Cleghorn turned 
up the narrow steps, Webb muttered per- 
plexedly, "To funk at this point and for a 
tea! The man is touched or in love." 

Webb with Mayhew's dispassionate aid 
made a considerable haul below the second 
stone, though in truth there was nothing 
there to compare with the first lot. The 
batch of lustred pots is the pride of his 
eye, and when it is suggested that he 
values them highly he answers, "Well 
rather, they're pretty good, you know, and 
then they nearly cost me a broken head. 



152 THE LUSTRED POTS 

I was so keen for them that I set a big 
stone where it might easily have tumbled 
on me." Then the rest of the anecdote, 
which Cleghorn, in whose presence it fre- 
quently is told, never hears with complete 
equanimity. The causes of his uneasiness 
I do not engage to analyse, for, unlike 
Webb, Cleghorn is imaginative and diffi- 
cult. 




THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

S the dinner wore on endlessly, I 
consoled myself by the thought 
of the Balaklava Coronal. There 
in the toastmaster's seat was 
Morrison who had bought it, at my right 
loomed Vogelstein who had sold it, far 
across, towards the foot of the board, sat 
the critic Brush in whose presence I under- 
stood the infamous sale had been made. I 
missed only Sarafoff, the marvellous peas- 
ant-silversmith, who wrought the coronal 
in his prison workshop in the Viennese 
ghetto. Now there was nothing strange 
about Vogelstein's selling it, nor yet about 
Morrison's buying it; only the making of 
it by the illiterate Sarafoff and the silence 
of Brush when it was sold required ex- 
planation. Vogelstein, who breathed heav- 
ily beside me, undoubtedly held the secret. 
I felt so hopeful that time and the cham- 
pagne which we were drinking for the sake 
of art would give him to me that I took no 
i53 



i54 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

pains meanwhile to disturb his elaborate 
indifference to my presence. 
Between him and me little love was lost. 
As the editor of a moneylosing art maga- 
zine in the interior, it was my duty occa- 
sionally to visit his galleries. After such 
visits the remnant of my New England 
conscience usually forced me to diminish or 
actually to spoil many a sale of the dubious 
or merely fashionable antiquities in which 
he dealt. But in the main my power to 
harm him was slight. He held in a knowing 
grip the strings of his patrons' vanity and 
taste. So he regarded me with something 
between scorn and uneasiness — as a pachy- 
derm might take a predatory bee. For the 
sake of my steady production of the honey 
of free advertising he forgave a sting from 
which he was after all immune. At the be- 
ginning of the dinner he had greeted me 
with what was meant for a civility and 
then had relapsed into silence. To escape 
the loquacity of my other neighbour I gave 
myself to parallel observation of Vogel- 
stein and Morrison — the great dealer and 
his greater customer. 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 155 

Both plainly belonged to the same species 
and it pleased my whim to symbolise them 
as a mastodon and a rogue elephant. 
Morrison, the dreaded agent and opera- 
tor, was unquestionably the finer creature. 
He moved more precisely and with a sense 
of wieldy power. His phrases cut where 
Vogelstein's merely smote. His bigness 
had something genial about it. He looked 
the amateur, and indeed does not the 
rogue elephant trample down villages 
chiefly for the joy of the affray? One felt 
that something more than Morrison's pre- 
posterous winnings had been involved in 
the clashes of railroads and cataclysms on 
the exchange which had for years past been 
his major recreation. Vogelstein, though 
evidently of coarser fibre, belonged to the 
same formidable breed. The mastodon, we 
must suppose, lacked much of the finesse 
of the rogue elephant of later evolution. 
And Vogelstein's Semitism was of the 
archaic, potent, monumental type. His 
abundant fat looked hard. For all the sag- 
ging double chin, his jaw retained the char- 
acter of a clamp. Among the strong race 



156 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

of art dealers he was feared. Whole collec- 
tions not single objects were his quarry. 
He paid lavishly, foolishly, counting as 
confidently on the ignorance and vanity 
of his clients, as ever Morrison upon the 
brute expansion of the national wealth. 
But Vogelstein looked and was as com- 
pletely the professional as Morrison the 
amateur. There remained this essential 
difference that if nothing could be too big 
to stagger Vogelstein, nothing likewise 
could be too small to deter him. I knew his 
shop, or rather his palace, and had ob- 
served the relish with which he could 
shame a timorous art student into giving 
three prices for a print. It afforded him no 
more pleasure, one could surmise, to im- 
pose a false Rembrandt at six figures upon 
a wavering iron-master, or, indeed to un- 
load an historic but rather worthless col- 
lection upon Morrison himself. For Vogel- 
stein was after all of primitive stamp, to 
wit the militant publican. So he took toll 
and plenty, it mattered little where or 
whence. 
To Morrison and Vogelstein no better foil 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 157 

could be imagined than Brush. If they re- 
called the tusked monsters that charged in 
the van of Asiatic armies, his analogue 
was the desert horse. Small, spare, sensi- 
tive, shy, his every posture suggested race, 
training, spirit, and docility. His flair for 
classical art had become proverbial. By 
mere touch he detected those remarkable 
counterfeits of Syracusan coins. It was he 
who segregated the Renaissance intaglios 
at Bloomsbury only the winter before he 
exposed the composite figurines at Berlin. 
To him the Balaklava Coronal must have 
proclaimed its nullity as far as its red gold 
could be seen. For that matter the coronal 
was a bye-word, and why not? The same 
dealers who had landed the more famous 
Tiara in the Louvre had the selling of it. 
The greater museums in Europe and 
America had refused it at a bargain. On 
Fifth Avenue and the Rue Lafitte all the 
dealers were joking about the Balaklava 
Coronal. The name of Sarafoff, its maker, 
had even become accepted slang. For a 
season we "Sarafoffed" our intimates in- 
stead of hoaxing them. And in the face of 



158 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

all this Vogelstein had sold the Coronal to 
Morrison under Brush's very nose. It 
seemed so wholly incredible that I began 
counting Vogelstein's heavy respirations, 
to make sure I was really awake. 
Then the pale, tense mask of Brush — so 
isolated in the apoplectic row across the 
table — calmed me. That he was Vogel- 
stein's or anyone's tool was unthinkable. 
Mercenary suspicions, to be sure, had 
been put about, but those who knew him 
merely laughed at such a notion. Vogel- 
stein also laughed, shaking volcanically 
within, whenever the Coronal, the genuine- 
ness of which he still maintained, was men- 
tioned. And he always treated Brush with 
a curious and almost tender condescension, 
much in fact as the mastodon might have 
regarded that fragile ancestor of the horse, 
the five-toed protohippos. 
I have neglected to explain that the occa- 
sion which brought me at one table with 
such major celebrities as Morrison, Vogel- 
stein, and Brush was a public dinner in 
behalf of civic art. For just as we find the 
celestial compromised by the naughty 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 159 

Aphrodite, so we distinguish two anti- 
thetical sorts of art. There is a bad private 
art which is produced for dealers and 
millionaires and takes care of itself, and 
there is a virtuous public art which we 
hope to have some day and meanwhile has 
to be taken care of by special societies. It 
was one of these that was now dining for 
the good of the cause. Under the benevo- 
lent eye of Morrison, our acting president, 
we had put pompano upon a soup under- 
laid with oysters, and then a larded fillet 
upon some casual tidbit of terrapins. 
Whereupon a frozen punch. Thus courage 
was gained, the consecrated sequence of 
sherry, hock, claret and champagne being 
absolved, for the proper discussion of 
woodcock in the red with a famous old 
burgundy — Morrison's personal compli- 
ment to the apostolate of civic art. 
At the dessert, Morrison himself spoke a 
few words. The little speech came brusquely 
from him, and no one who knew his ra- 
pacity for the beautiful could doubt his 
faith in the universal superlatives he now 
advocated. Our art, he held, must weigh 



160 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

with our mills and railroads, else our life 
is out of balance. We never grudged mil- 
lions to burrow beneath New York for 
light, or for drink or speed, why then 
should we t grudge them for the beautiful 
inutilities that might make the surface of 
the city splendid. A craving for fine ob- 
jects was his own dearest emotion, he 
wanted to see cities, states, and the nation 
ready to spend with equal fervour. It all 
came apparently to a matter of spending. 
Morrison entertained no doubt that an 
imperious demand would create an abun- 
dant supply of what he called the best art. 
Whether we were to transport bodily the 
great monuments of Europe to America, 
or merely were to supply beauty off our 
indigenous bat, was not clear from Morri- 
son's address, and possibly was not wholly 
so in his own mind. But the talk was solid 
and forceful, and I could hear Vogelstein 
grunt with inward joy when he contem- 
plated the city, the state, and the nation 
in their predicted role as customers. I too 
felt that a real if an incoherent voice had 
spoken, and that if civic art were indeed 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 161 

to come, it would be through such neo- 
Roman visionaries as Morrison. 
Then the mood changed and a willowy, 
hirsute, and earnest reviver of tapestry 
weaving rose and pleaded for the "City 
Beautiful," castigating the Philistine the 
while, and looking forward to a time when 
"the pomp, and chronicle of our time 
should be splendidly committed to il- 
lumined window and pictured wall," with 
some slight allusion to "those ancient 
webs through which the Middle Ages still 
speak glowingly to us." 
About midway in the speech Morrison, 
who had another public dinner down the 
avenue slipped away. As he nodded "See 
you later perhaps" I marked the ador- 
ing eye and smile of Vogelstein, and then 
the great folds settled back into their 
places about his mouth and my neigh- 
bour once more gave an uneasy atten- 
tion to the weaver of beautiful phrases, 
meanwhile drinking repeated glasses of 
burgundy. Soon his huge form heaved 
with an inarticulate discontent, and as 
the speaker sat down amid perfunctory 



162 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

applause Vogelstein snorted twice into 
the air. 

"It is rather absurd, as you say," I ven- 
tured. 

"It's sickening," wheezed Vogelstein. 
"Why can't he sell his tapestries without 
all that talk?" 

"Oh, he enjoys the talk and probably be- 
lieves it, and you and I do better after 
all to hear his talk than to see his tapes- 
tries." A mastodonic chuckle welcomed 
this mild sally. The burgundy was taking 
effect. 

As the diners rose stiffly or alertly, accord- 
ing to their several grades of repletion, 
Vogelstein attached himself to me almost 
affectionately. "Do stop in the cafe and 
talk to me," he urged. "It's queer, here 
are a lot of my customers, some of my 
artists, besides you literary chaps, and 
except Morrison, nobody wants to talk to 
me. Morrison and I, we understand each 
other. It's early yet. Come along with me 
and talk. I've wanted to talk to you for a 
long time, but always was too busy in my 
place. You see you writers don't buy, in 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 163 

fact those that know almost never do. It's 
really queer." 

Knowing the might of burgundy when a 
due foundation of champagne has been 
laid, I hardly took this effusion as personal 
to myself, but I also saw no reason, too, 
why I should not profit by the occasion. 
" I'll gladly chat with you, Mr. Vogelstein," 
I answered, "but you must let me choose 
the subject. We will talk about the 
Balaklava Coronal." 

As he led me into the elevator by the arm 
he whispered "All right, Old Man, but 
why? You know just as much as I about 
it." 

There was no chance to reply until he 
had selected his table and ordered two 
Scotches and soda. "Yes, I know something 
about it," I said at last; "everyone does 
apparently except Morrison. I know that 
Sarafoff made the Coronal, but I don't 
know who taught him how to make it, nor 
yet how Morrison was idiot enough to buy 
it, when anybody could have told him 
what it was, nor yet how Brush came to let 
it be sold. These are the interesting parts 



164 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

of the story, and I'll drink no drink of 
yours unless you telL" 
At the mention of idiocy in connection 
with Morrison Vogelstein shuddered and 
raised a massive deprecating hand. The 
gesture was arrested by the entrance of 
Brush, who with a slight nod to us passed 
to a distant corner. Suddenly Vogelstein's 
expression had become one beaming, con- 
descending paternalism. "Good man but 
impracticable," he muttered. "Thinks 
knowing it is everything. Knowing it is 
something, but selling it is the real thing. 
Now I hardly know at all, not a tenth as 
much as Brush, not a half as much as you 
even, but so long as I can sell, I don't 
really care to know. What's the use?" 
"But you did know about the Balaklava 
Coronal and you sold it too," I inter- 
rupted. "How did you dare?" 
"That's my secret — but here are our 
drinks. A bargain's a bargain. How funny 
it is to be talking truth. Why, much of it 
would make even your job difficult." 
"And yours impossible, but we're not 
getting to the Coronal," I insisted. 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 165 

"As for that," responded Vogelstein oblig- 
ingly, "the first thing was of course the 
making. You know all about Sarafoff your- 
self. Well, he only did the work. It was 
Schonfeld who put in the brains. You 
don't know him? Few do. Great man 
though. University professor of archae- 
ology, trouble with a woman, next trouble 
with money, now one of us. Yes Schonfeld 
thought it out and saw it through." 
"And certainly made a good job of it," I 
admitted. 

"As you see, we wanted something unique 
— something that could not be compared 
with anything in the museums." 
"Precisely," I interposed, "Product of the 
local, semi-barbaric school of the Crimea." 
"You've hit it," grinned Vogelstein. 
"Scythian influence, to take the profes- 
sors. Schonfeld said we must have that. 
And that's why it had to be found at 
Balaklava." 

"But it had to look Scythian too. How did 
you manage that?" 

"Oh, that was Sarafoff 's business. He had 
been a servant and then a novice at one of 



166 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

the monasteries of Mount Athos. Could 
make beautiful tenth-century Byzantine 
madonnas. I've sold some. Then he carved 
ikons in wood, ivory, silver, or what came. 
His things really looked Scythian enough 
to those who didn't know their modern 
Greece and Russia. So we set him to work 
in a back alley of Vienna at three kroners 
a day — double pay for him — and Schon- 
feld ran down from Petersburg now and 
then to coach him." 

"You could trust him?" I inquired, re- 
calling how Sarafoff had subsequently won 
fame by confessing to his most famous 
forgery. 

"As much as one can anybody. You see he 
doesn't speak any civilised language, and 
at that time we couldn't tell that the 
Tiara would spoil him as it did the entire 
deal." 

"But Schonf eld's coaching?" I suggested. 
Vogelstein here winked solemnly and 
drank deeply from his tall glass. "First I 
want to tell you all about Sarafoff," he 
persisted, "of course we had him watched 
all the same, and whenever he got an 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 167 

evening off, which was seldom, we had him 
filled up with schnapps. He was a quiet 
drunk which is an excellent thing, Sir." 
As I nodded assent to this great truth, 
he continued: "Yes Schonfeld, as I was 
saying, managed everything. Wonderful 
scholar. You would respect him Fm sure. 
Why, every bit of the pattern of the Coronal 
was taken from some real antique, every 
word of the inscription too." 
"Wasn't that a bit dangerous?" 
"With Schonfeld in charge, not so very. 
Everything was taken from little Russian 
museums that even you critics don't visit. 
Almost no published thing was used, you 
see." 

"Then there was Sarafoff" — 
"To give it all that quaint Scythian look," 
Vogelstein added joyously. "Yes, we had 
just the best brains and the best hands for 
the job, and it was beautiful." 
"Better than the Tiara?" 
"Yes, far better. The Tiara was all a mis- 
take, as I told Schonfeld; it was too big and 
too good to be true. Except for Steinbach, 
who fell in love with its queerness and 



168 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

chipped in some money, we never could 
have sold it to a museum. And it was a bad 
thing to have it there, it aroused opposi- 
tion, it was bound to be exposed. I was 
always against it, and sure enough it 
spoiled the game for us. But the Balaklava 
Coronal that was just right. It had a sort 
of well-bred modest beauty. We should 
have begun instead of ending with it. Yes, 
Sir, there never was a more beautiful 
thing, a more plausible thing, a finer object 
to sell than the Balaklava Coronal." 
As he bellowed the word and beat the table 
in confirmation, Brush looked over from 
his corner apprehensively. "Quietly, Mr. 
Vogelstein," I hinted, "this is between 
ourselves, and we might be overheard." 
"That's right," he admitted, and moodily 
lit another cigar. "Where were we?" he 
asked uneasily. "Oh yes, we were at the 
Tiara. Now the Coronal and what we could 
have sold on the strength of it was worth 
ten of the Tiara, and if it hadn't been for 
the cursed thing, we could have landed the 
Coronal as a starter in any one of half a 
dozen museums." 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 169 

"As a matter of fact they were all shy of 
it." 

"Of course. Once the Tiara was being 
looked into, the museum game was up, 
and there was only Morrison left." Vogel- 
stein lurched around nervously. "He may 
drop in soon," he explained. "I'd like to 
make you acquainted." 
Ignoring the offer, I persisted, "You've 
got to the interesting point at last. Tell me 
why there was only Morrison left. To be- 
gin with Morrison knows something about 
such matters, and next he can have the 
best advice for the asking. And yet you 
tell me that Morrison was the only great 
collector in the world to whom that no- 
toriously false bauble could be sold." 
Vogelstein swayed uncomfortably in his 
chair, puffed, swallowed, cleared his throat, 
and said, "There are some things one can't 
say right out; you know that as well as I, 
but I can say this: there are many great 
and enterprising collectors in America, and 
Morrison is the only one who never doubts 
anything he has once bought." 
"An ideal client then." 



i 7 o THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

" Quite so. You see the others get worried 
by the critics. That means exchanging, re- 
funding — all sorts of trouble." 
"But Morrison never?" 
"Never; he's a true sport. He never 
squeals." 

"Doesn't have to because he doesn't 
know he's hurt." 

"That's right," concluded Vogelstein, his 
face corrugating into one ample, contented 
smile. 

"Then the big game reduces itself into 
selling to Morrison." 

"That's more or less it, Sir. For a critic 
you have a business head." 
"You will excuse a rather personal ques- 
tion, but how do you feel about selling 
your best customer at enormous prices ob- 
jects which you know to be false?" 
"It's a fair question since we are talking 
between ourselves, and you shall have a 
straight answer. First my business isn't 
just a nice one. In the nature of the case it 
wouldn't do for sensitive people. I suppose 
you and Brush, for instance, couldn't and 
wouldn't make much out of it. Then as 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 171 

regards Morrison, I'm not so sure he could 
complain if he knew. I give him the things 
he likes and the treatment he likes at the 
prices he likes. What more can any mer- 
chant do?" 

I saw the subject rapidly exhausting itself 
and tried one more tack. "Yes, it's simpler 
than I supposed," I admitted, "but it 
doesn't seem quite an every-day thing to 
sell the Balaklava Coronal to anybody un- 
der Brush's nose." 

"It's easier than you think," echoed Vogel- 
stein. "You don't know Morrison. Hope 
he'll look in tonight. You ought to meet 
him." 

My last bolt was shot. It was my turn to 
sit silent and drink. What could be this 
strange infatuation of the hardheaded 
Morrison, this avowedly simple magic of 
the grossly cunning Vogelstein? As I 
pondered the case I noticed Brush give a 
startled glance towards the entrance, 
heard heavy steps behind us, and then a 
deep voice saying, "Hallo again, Vogel- 
stein, I'm lucky not to be too late to catch 
you." 



172 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

Vogelstein lumbered to his feet and mut- 
tered an introduction. We all took our 
seats, as the headwaiter bustled obsequi- 
ously up to take Morrison's order of 
champagne. As if also obeying Morrison's 
nod, but reluctantly, Brush crawled over 
from his corner, a scarcely deferential at- 
tendant transporting his lemonade. 
While casual greetings and some random 
talk went on I tried to picture the scene we 
must present. Neither Brush nor myself 
is contemptible physically or in other 
ways, yet we both seemed curiously the 
inferiors of these troglodytic giants. Our 
scruples, the voluntary complication of our 
lives, seemed to constitute at least a dis- 
advantage when measured against the 
primitiveness, perhaps the rather brutal 
simplicity, of our companions. 
It was Morrison who cut these reflections 
short. "You will excuse me, gentlemen," 
he said, "for introducing a matter of busi- 
ness here, but the case is pressing and it 
may even interest you as critics of art." 
We nodded permission and he continued, 
"It's about the Bleichrode Raphael, as of 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 173 

course you know, Vogelstein. I like it, I 
want it, but I hear all sorts of things about 
it, and frankly it strikes me as dear at the 
price. How do you feel about it?" 
At the mention of the Bleichrode Raphael, 
Brush and I started. The forgery was more 
than notorious. The Bleichrode panel had 
begun life poorly but honestly as a Fran- 
ciabigio — a portrait of an unknown Floren- 
tine lad with a beretta, the type of which 
Raphael's portrait of himself is the most 
famous example. The picture hung long in 
a private gallery at Rome and was duly 
listed in the handbooks. One day it disap- 
peared and when it once more came to light 
it had become the Bleichrode Raphael. 
Its Raphaelisation had been effected, as 
many of us knew, by the consummate re- 
storer Vilgard of Ghent, and for him the 
task had been an easy one. It had needed 
only slight eliminations and discreet addi- 
tions to produce a portrait of Raphael by 
himself far more obviously captivating 
than any of the genuine series. Soon the 
picture vanished from Schloss Bleichrode, 
and it became anybody's guess what 



174 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

amateur had been elected to become its 
possessor. The museums naturally were 
forewarned. 

While this came into Brush's memory and 
mine, Vogelstein's countenance had be- 
come severe, almost sinister, and he was 
answering Morrison as follows: 
"Mr. Morrison, I have offered you the 
Bleichrode Raphael for half a million dol- 
lars. You will hear all sorts of gossip about 
it. Doubtless these gentlemen (indicating 
us) believe it is false and will tell you so 
(we nodded feebly). But I offer it not to 
their judgment but to yours. You and I 
know it is a beautiful thing and worth the 
money. I make no claims, offer no guar- 
antee for the picture. You have seen it, and 
that's enough. If you don't want it, it 
makes no difference to me, I can sell it to 
Theiss (the great Parisian amateur, Morri- 
son's only real rival), or I will gladly keep 
it myself, for I shall never have anything 
as fine again." 

Morrison sat impassively while Vogelstein 
watched him narrowly. Brush and I felt 
for something that ought to be said yet 



THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 175 

would not come. At the end of his speech, 
or challenge, Vogelstein's expression had 
softened into one of the most courtly in- 
genuousness, now it hardened again into a 
strange arrogance. His eyes snapped as he 
continued with affected indifference, " Since 
you have raised the question, Mr. Morri- 
son, the Bleichrode Raphael is yours to 
take or leave — to-night." 
There was a pause as the two giants faced 
each other. Then Morrison smiled beam- 
ingly, as one who loved a good fighter, and 
said, "Send it round tomorrow, of course 
I want it. Well, that's settled, and if these 
gentlemen will spare you, I'll give you a 
lift down town." 

Vogelstein's arrogance melted once more 
into fulsomeness as he said, almost for- 
getting his Goodnight to us, "I'm sure it's 
very good of you, Mr. Morrison." 
The forms of Morrison and Vogelstein al- 
most blocked the generous intercolumnar 
space as shoulder to shoulder they moved 
away between the yellow marble pillars 
and under the green and gold ceiling. The 
brown leather doors swung silently behind 



i;6 THE BALAKLAVA CORONAL 

them, and we were left together with our 

amazement. 

"Never mind, Old Fellow," said Brush at 

last. "It's the first time for you. You'll get 

used to it. It's my second time; I happened 

to be there, you know, when the Balaklava 

Coronal was sold." 




SOME REFLECTIONS ON 
ART COLLECTING 

|ORALLY considered, the art col- 
lector is tainted with the fourth 
deadly sin; pathologically, he 
is often afflicted by a degree 
of mania. His distinguished kinsman, the 
connoisseur, scorns him as a kind of 
mercenary, or at least a manner of rene- 
gade. I shall never forget the expression 
with which a great connoisseur — who 
possesses one of the finest private collec- 
tions in the Val d'Arno — in speaking of a 

famous colleague, declared, "Oh, X ! 

Why, X is merely a collector." The 

implication is, of course, that the one who 
loves art truly and knows it thoroughly 
will find full satisfaction in an enjoyment 
devoid alike of envy or the desire of pos- 
session. He is to adore all beautiful objects 
with a Platonic fervour to which the idea of 
acquisition and domestication is repugnant. 
Before going into this lofty argument, I 
177 



178 ON ART COLLECTING 

should perhaps explain the collection of my 
scornful friend. He would have said: "I see 

that as I put X in his proper place, 

you look at my pictures and smile. You 
have rightly divined that they are of some 

rarity, of a sort, in fact, for which X 

and his kind would sell their immortal 
souls. But I beg you to note that these 
pictures and bits of sculpture have been 
bought not at all for their rarity, nor even 
for their beauty as such, but simply be- 
cause of their appropriateness as decora- 
tions for this particular villa. They repre- 
sent not my energy as a collector, nor even 
my zeal as a connoisseur, but simply my 
normal activity as a man of taste. In this 
villa it happens that Italian old masters 
seem the proper material for decoration. 
In another house or in another land you 
might find me employing, again solely for 
decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, 
the landscapes of the modern impression- 
ists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of 
the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the 
reproach implied in that covert leer at my 
Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, 



ON ART COLLECTING 179 

exclude from the ranks of the true zealots 
all who in any plausible fashion utilise the 
objects of art they buy. Excess, the crav- 
ing to possess what he apparently does not 
need, is the mark of your true collector. 
Now these visionaries — at least the true 
ones — honour each other according to the 
degree of "eye" that each possesses. By 
"eye" the collector means a faculty of 
discerning a fine object quickly and in- 
stinctively. And, in fact, the trained eye 
becomes a magically fine instrument. It 
detects the fractions of a millimetre by 
which a copy belies its original. In colours it 
distinguishes nuances that a moderately 
trained vision will declare non-existent. 
Nor is the trained collector bound by the 
evidence of the eye alone. Of certain 
. things he knows the taste or adhesiveness. 
His ear grasps the true ring of certain 
potteries, porcelains, or qualities of beaten 
metal. I know an expert on Japanese pot- 
tery who, when a sixth sense tells him that 
two pots apparently identical come really 
from different kilns, puts them behind his 
back and refers the matter from his retina 



180 ON ART COLLECTING 

to his finger-tips. Thus alternately chal- 
lenged and trusted, the eye should become 
extraordinarily expert. A Florentine col- 
lector once saw in a junk-shop a marble 
head of beautiful workmanship. Ninety- 
nine amateurs out of a hundred would have 
said. "What a beautiful copy!" for the 
same head is exhibited in a famous mu- 
seum and is reproduced in pasteboard, 
clay, metal, and stone ad nauseam. But this 
collector gave the apparent copy a second 
look and a third. He reflected that the ex- 
ample in the museum was itself no original, 
but a school-piece, and as he gazed the 
conviction grew that here was the original. 
Since it was closing time, and the marble 
heavy, a bargain was struck for the mor- 
row. After an anxious night, this fortunate 
amateur returned in a cab to bring home 
what criticism now admits is a superb 
Desiderio da Settignano. The incident il- 
lustrates capitally the combination of 
keenness and patience that goes to make 
the collector's eye. 

We may divide collectors into those who 
play the game and those who do not. The 



ON ART COLLECTING 181 

wealthy gentleman who gives carte blanche 
to his dealers and agents is merely a spoil- 
sport. He makes what should be a matter 
of adroitness simply an issue of brute force. 
He robs of all delicacy what from the first 
glow of discovery to actual possession 
should be a fine transaction. Not only does 
he lose the real pleasures of the chase, but 
he raises up a special clan of sycophants to 
part him and his money. A mere handful 
of such — amassers, let us say — have de- 
moralised the art market. According to the 
length of their purses, collectors may also 
be divided into those who seek and those 
who are sought. Wisdom lies in making 
the most of either condition. The seekers 
unquestionably get more pleasure; the 
sought achieve the more imposing results. 
The seekers depend chiefly on their own 
judgment, buying preferably of those who 
know less than themselves; the sought de- 
pend upon the judgment of those who 
know more than themselves, and, natu- 
rally, must pay for such vicarious ex- 
pertise. And, rightly, they pay dear. Let 
no one who buys of a great dealer imagine 



i82 ON ART COLLECTING 

that he pays simply the cost of an object 
plus a generous percentage of profit. No, 
much-sought amateur, you pay the rent of 
that palace in Bond Street or Fifth 
Avenue; you pay the salary of the gentle- 
manly assistant or partner whose time is at 
your disposal during your too rare visits; 
you pay the commissions of an army of 
agents throughout the world; you pay, 
alas! too often the cost of securing false 
"sale records" in classic auction rooms; 
and, finally, it is only too probable that 
you pay also a heavy secret commission 
to the disinterested friend who happened 
to remark there was an uncommonly fine 

object in Y 's gallery. By a cheerful 

acquiescence in the suggestions that are 
daily made to you, you may accumulate 
old masters as impersonally, as genteelly, 
let me say, as you do railway bonds. But, 
of course, under these circumstances you 
must not expect bargains. 
Now, in objects that are out of the fash- 
ion — a category including always many of 
the best things — and if approached in 
slack times, the great dealers will occa- 



ON ART COLLECTING 183 

sionally afford bargains, but in general the 
economically minded collector, who is not 
necessarily the poor one, must intercept 
his prey before it reaches the capitals. 
That it makes all the difference from whom 
and where you buy, let a recent example 
attest. A few years ago a fine Giorgiones- 
que portrait was offered to an American 
amateur by a famous London dealer. At 
$60,000 the refusal was granted for a few 
days only, subject to cable response. The 
photograph was tempting, but the be- 
sought amateur, knowing that the au- 
thenticity of the average Giorgione is 
somewhat less certain than, say, the period 
of the Book of Job, let the opportunity 
pass. A few months after learning of this 
incident, I had the pleasure of meeting in 
Florence an English amateur who ex- 
patiated upon the beauty of a Giorgione 
that he had just acquired at the very rea- 
sonable price of $15,000. For particulars he 
referred me to one of the great dealers of 
Florence. The portrait, as I already sus- 
pected, was the one I had heard of in 
America. Forty-five thousand dollars repre- 



184 ON ART COLLECTING 

sented the difference between buying it of 
a Florentine rather than a London dealer. 
Of course, the picture itself had never left 
Florence at all, the limited refusal and the 
rest were merely part of the usual comedy 
played between the great dealer and his 
client. On the other hand, if the lucky 
English collector had had the additional 
good fortune to make his find in an Italian 
auction room or at a small dealer's, he 
would probably have paid little more than 
$5,000, while the same purchase made of a 
wholly ignorant dealer or direct from the 
reduced family who sold this ancestor 
might have been made for a few hundred 
francs. With the seekers obviously lie all 
the mystery and romance of the pursuit. 
The rest surely need not be envied to the 
sought. One thinks of Consul J. J. Jarves 
gradually getting together that little col- 
lection of Italian primitives, at New 
Haven, which, scorned in his lifetime and 
actually foreclosed for a trifling debt, is 
now an object of pilgrimage for European 
amateurs and experts. One recalls the 
mouse-like activities of the Brothers Du- 



ON ART COLLECTING 185 

tuit, unearthing here a gorgeous enamel, 
retrieving there a Rembrandt drawing, 
fetching out a Gothic ivory from a junk- 
shop. One sighs for those days, and de- 
clares that they are forever past. Does not 
the sage M. Eudel warn us that there are 
no more finds — " Surtout ne comptez plus 
sur les trouvailles" Yet not so long ago 
I mildly chid a seeker, him of the Desiderio, 
for not having one of his rare pictures 
photographed for the use of students. He 
smiled and admitted that I was perfectly 
right, but added pleadingly, "You know a 
negative costs about twenty francs, and 
for that one may often get an original." 
Why, even I who write — but I have 
promised that this essay shall not exceed 
reasonable bounds. 

For the poor collector, however, the money 
consideration remains a source of manifold 
embarrassment, morally and otherwise. 
How many an enthusiast has justified an 
extravagant purchase by a flattering previ- 
sion of profits accruing to his widow and 
orphans? Let the recording angel reply. 
And such hopes are at times justified. 



186 ON ART COLLECTING 

There have been instances of men refused 
by the life insurance companies who have 
deliberately adopted the alternative of col- 
lecting for investment, and have done so 
successfully. Obviously, such persons fall 
into the class which the French call 
charitably the marchand-amateur. Note, 
however, that the merchant comes first. 
Now, to be a poor yet reasonably success- 
ful collector without becoming a marchand- 
amateur requires moral tact and resolution. 
The seeker of the short purse naturally be- 
comes a sort of expert in prices. 'As he 
prowls he sees many fine things which he 
neither covets nor could afford to keep, but 
which are offered at prices temptingly be- 
low their value in the great shops. The 
temptation is strong to buy and resell. 
Naturally, one profitable transaction of 
this sort leads to another, and soon the 
amateur is in the attitude of " making the 
collection pay for itself." The inducement 
is so insidious that I presume there are 
rather few persistent collectors not wealthy 
who are not in a measure dealers. Now, to 
deal or not to deal might seem purely a 



ON ART COLLECTING 187 

matter of social and business expediency. 
But the issue really lies deeper. The diffi- 
culty is that of not letting your left hand 
know what your right hand does. A 
morally ambidextrous person may do 
what he pleases. He keeps the dealer and 
collector apart, and subject to his will one 
or the other emerges. The feat is too diffi- 
cult for average humanity. In nearly every 
case a prolonged struggle will end in favour 
of the commercial self. I have followed the 
course of many collector-dealers, and I 
know very few instances in which the col- 
lection has not averaged down to the level 
of a shop — a fine shop, perhaps, but still a 
shop. I blame no man for following the 
wide road, but I feel more kinship with him 
who walks scrupulously in the narrow path 
of strict amateurism. Let me hasten to add 
that there are times when everybody must 
sell. Collections must periodically be weed- 
ed out; one may be hard up and sell his 
pictures as another in similar case his 
horses; artists will naturally draw into 
their studios beautiful objects which, oc- 
casion offering, they properly sell. With 



188 ON ART COLLECTING 

these obvious exceptions the line is abso- 
lutely sharp. Did you buy a thing to keep ? 
Then you are an amateur, though later 
your convenience or necessity dictates a 
sale. Did you buy it to sell? Then you are a 
dealer. 

The safety of the little collector lies in 
specialisation, and there, too, lies his 
surest satisfaction. To have a well-defined 
specialty immediately simplifies the quest. 
There are many places where one need 
never go. Moreover, where nature has pro- 
vided fair intelligence, one must die very 
young in order not to die an expert. As I 
write I think of D- , one of the last sur- 
viving philosophers. Born with the in- 
stincts of a man of letters, he declined to 
give himself to the gentler pursuit until he 
had made a little competence at the law. 
As he followed his disinterested course of 
writing and travel, his enthusiasm cen- 
tred upon the antiquities of Greece and 
Rome. In the engraved gems of that time 
he found a beautiful epitome of his favourite 
studies. For ten years study and collecting 
have gone patiently hand in hand. He 



ON ART COLLECTING 189 

possesses some fifty classical gems, many 
of the best Greek period, all rare and in- 
teresting from material, subject, or work- 
manship, and he may have spent as many 
dollars in the process, but I rather doubt 
it. He knows his subject as well as he loves 
it. Naturally he is writing a book on in- 
taglios, and it will be a good one. Mean- 
while, if the fancy takes him to visit the 
site of the Bactrian Empire, he has only to 
put his collection in his pocket and enjoy 
it en route. I cannot too highly commend 
his example, and yet his course is too 
austere for many of us. Has untrammelled 
curiosity no charms? Would I, for example, 
forego my casual kakemonos, my igno- 
rantly acquired majolica, some trifling 
accumulation of Greek coins, that handful 
of Eastern rugs? Could I prune away cer- 
tain excrescent minor Whistlers ? those bits 
of ivory cutting from old Italy and Japan? 
those tarnished Tuscan panels? — in truth, 
I could and would not. Yet had I stuck to 
my first love, prints, I should by this time 
be mentioned respectfully among the initi- 
ated, my name would be found in the 



i 9 o ON ART COLLECTING 

card-catalogues of the great dealers, my 
decease would be looked forward to with 
resignation by my junior colleagues. As 
it is, after twenty years of collecting, and 
an expenditure shameful in one of my fiscal 
estate, I have nothing that even courtesy 
itself could call a collection. In apology, I 
may plead only the sting of unchartered 
curiosity, the adventurous thrill of buying 
on half or no knowledge, the joy of an in- 
stinctive sympathy that, irrespective of 
boundaries, knows its own when it sees it. 
And you austerely single-minded ama- 
teurs, you experts that surely shall be, I 
revere if I may not follow you. 
We have left dangling from the first para- 
graph the morally important question, Is 
collecting merely an habitual contraven- 
tion of the tenth commandment? Now, I 
am far from denying that collecting has its 
pathology, even its criminology, if you 
will. The mere lust of acquisition may take 
the ugly form of coveting what one neither 
loves nor understands. This pit is digged 
for the rich collector. Poor collectors, on 
the other hand, have at times forgotten 



ON ART COLLECTING 191 

where enterprise ends and kleptomania 
begins. But these excesses are, after all, 
rare, and for that matter they are merely 
those that attach to all exaggerations of 
legitimate passion. As for the notion that 
one should love beautiful things without 
desiring them, it seems to me to lie peri- 
lously near a sort of pseudo-Platonism, 
which, wherever it recurs, is the enemy of 
life itself. As I write, my eye falls upon a 
Japanese sword-guard. I have seen it a 
thousand times, but I never fail to feel the 
same thrill. Out of the disc of blued steel 
the artisan has worked the soaring form of 
a bird with upraised wings. It is indicated 
in skeleton fashion by bars extraordinarily 
energetic, yet suavely modulated. There 
must have been feeling and intelligence in 
every touch of the chisel and file that 
wrought it. Could that same object seen 
occasionally in a museum showcase afford 
me any comparable pleasure? Is not the 
education of the eye, like the education of 
the sentiments, dependent upon stable as- 
sociations that can be many times re- 
peated? Shall I seem merely covetous be- 



192 ON ART COLLECTING 

cause I crave besides the casual and adven- 
turous contact with beauty in the world, 
a gratification which is sure and ever wait- 
ing for me? But let me cite rather a cer- 
tain collector and man of great affairs, who 
perforce spends his days in adjusting busi- 
ness interests that extend from the arctic 
snows to the tropics. His evenings belong 
generally to his friends, for he possesses in 
a rare degree the art of companionship. 
The small hours are his own, and fre- 
quently he spends them in painting beauti- 
ful copies of his Japanese potteries. It is 
his homage to the artisans who contrived 
those strange forms and imagined those 
gorgeous glazes. In the end he will have a 
catalogue illustrated from his own designs. 
Meanwhile, he knows his potteries as the 
shepherd knows his flock. What casuist 
will find the heart to deny him so innocent 
a pleasure? And he merely represents in a 
very high degree the sort of priestliness 
that the true collector feels towards his 
temporary possessions. 
And this sense of the high, nay, supreme 
value of beautiful things, has its evident 



ON ART COLLECTING 193 

uses. That the beauty of art has not 
largely perished from the earth is due 
chiefly to the collector. He interposes his 
sensitiveness between the insensibility of 
the average man and the always exiled 
thing of beauty. If we have in a fractional 
measure the art treasures of the past, it 
has been because the collector has given 
them asylum. Museums, all manner of 
overt public activities, derive ultimately 
from his initiative. It is he who asserts the 
continuity of art and illustrates its dignity. 
The stewardship of art is manifold, but no 
one has a clearer right to that honourable 
title. "Private vices, public virtues," I 
hear a cynical reader murmur. So be it. I 
am ready to stand with the latitudinarian 
Mandeville. The view makes for charity. 
I only plead that he who covets his neigh- 
bour's tea-jar — I assume a desirable one, 
say, in old brown Kioto — shall be judged 
less harshly than he who covets his neigh- 
bour's ox. 



OCT 23 1912 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

015 909 291 4 




